Counter Course Handbook 2012 by David Mack

COUNTER COURSE

HANDBOOK

2012 you should be really pleased

The University of Sydney Studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Representative Council acknowledges the traditional owners of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. We stand on this land today as beneďŹ ciaries of an incompensated and unreconciled disposession which ocurred over 200 years ago. Many of the descendants of those dispossessed live just down the road in abject poverty, and as young people it is important to recognise how this history of dislocation and disenfranchisement has contributed to the inequity we observe in contemporary society, particularly in the area of education. We acknowledge both our privilege and our obligation to redress the situation at best we can: to remember the mistakes of the past, act on the problems of today, and build for a future for everyone who will not call this place home, striving always for practical and meaningful reconciliation. If you are reading this, you are standing on Aboriginal land. Please recognise and respect this.

Contents Editorial

Engineering AMME Civil Chemical Electrical

Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Welcome

30 30 31 31

Degree Planning Lies your Teachers Tell

Health Sciences

Agriculture

Law

Architecture

Medicine

Arts Ancient History 10 Archaeology 10 Anthropology 11 Art History 11 English 12 Film Studies 13 Gender Studies 13 Government 14 History 15 Koori Centre 16 INGS 16 Languages 17 Linguistics 18 MECO 18 Sociology 19 Philosophy 20 Performance Studies 21 Religion 21 Economics 22 Political Economy 23

Music

Nursing

Pharmacy

Science Biology Chemistry Geosciences I.T. Mathematics Psychology

38 38 39 39 40 41

Sydney College of the Arts

Veterinary Science

Special Consideration and Plagiarism

USYD Dictionary

Dentistry

How to Not Get Screwed

Business Accounting Finance Marketing

25 25 26

Staff Cuts

Free Education

Student Rep. Network

SRC Legal Service

SRC Books

Gratitude and Fist Shakes

Education Education Social Work

28 28

Who is Michael Spence? 56

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Editorial Deprived of light, air and sanity, we’ve successfully birthed forth to you the Counter Course Handbook for 2012. We’ve been trapped in the SRC dungeon for the past two weeks; it’s a dark, damp, windowless hole in the ground, so this is a labour of love for both of us. For those of you reading this at enrolment, you probably have one of the Faculty subject guides in your other hand. We won’t lie, they win on the aesthetics. They’re glossy, and colourful, but you’ll notice after a while that they say not a bad word about their subjects because they’re really nothing short of advertisements. But gee, wasn’t the several million dollar rebrand totally worth it? The Counter Course Handbook is your antidote to this wankery. The reality is that some of your classes will suck, many will be overcrowded and others will leave you remortgaging your family home to pay for weird and in no way wonderful course costs. It is the prime goal of this handbook to provide an uncomfortably honest appraisal of subjects, faculties and their assorted appendages. At the end of November last year the SRC sent out a survey to every undergraduate student, which for many was their only chance to voice their opinion on the subjects they took that year in an anonymous and conﬁdential space. Around 2000 chose to respond (read: procrastinate), and we used all the good, bad and ugly things they said to whip up this handy guide to studying at Sydney University. Think of it as the one textbook you never have to pay for.

Sam Farrell and David Pink Although Sydney University may appear a well-oiled sandstone machine, the recurrent theme in this year’s survey was bureaucracy. The truth is that some university administrators are obstinate, stubborn and sometimes plain dysfunctional. We all know that education isn’t all about lolloping along to class and soaking up the gift of knowledge – your time at Sydney will be punctuated with subject changes, pre-requisite waivers, major structuring, special consideration and beer. All of the above will often go down like a charm, but occasionally they will all cause headaches. The SRC is your panadol. As the SRC Education Oﬃcers, we head up the Education Action Group (EAG), a network of students which organises campaigns for a free, accessible and quality education at Sydney Uni and around the country. Find us at our stall during O-week. Keep in mind that the EAG and your SRC are always alert and alive, ready for your tussles with University to become ours. If there is any advice we can oﬀer to you during your time here, it would be just one word from each of us. Get involved! Sam and David

Not unlike pretentious snobbery, the Counter Course Handbook is a time-honoured tradition at Sydney University, so what you say in the survey does have an enormous impact – this handbook is something that everyone, even the lecturer, the dean and the Vice-Chancellor will read, share and like on Facebook. When we were in first year, the subjects we picked (and more importantly the ones we gave the big academic finger to) were based off what was written in this handbook. Throughout what was hopefully an unbearably amazing holiday, you probably heard that the almighty Vice-Chancellor of USYD Michael Spence posted a video message online. In it, he announced that 340 academic and general staff would be dismissed in the coming year. He also announced that ’you should be really pleased’ with Sydney University. And you should be; Sydney Uni is a genuinely fantastic place full of fantastic people both staff and students. You should love the student life, you should like your subjects and you should be pleased with your choice of uni. There are some things about which you should not be pleased. This announcement is one. PAGE 2

Contact David and Sam education.ofﬁcers@src.usyd.edu.au

9660 5222

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President’s Welcome Hello and welcome to all incoming 2012 USYD students, my name is Phoebe Drake and I’m the President of the Student’s Representative Council (SRC). Congratulations to those of you starting your first year at Sydney and I guarantee by the third week you will actually have some idea of where things are on campus. To those of you who are part way through your degree, welcome back to the usual days of coffee binging, late night cramming and afternoons at Manning. It is, after all, time to recover from sunburn as we bravely re-enter the classroom after three months of blissful holiday. I remember my first week at university quite vividly. If your experience is anything like my own, you have no doubt waded through the range of subjects available and now have some small idea of where you would like to major. Many of you will still be deciding, and that is completely fine. Your first week will be spent stumbling from one class to the next: late for some, on time for others, and, inevitably, completely lost for others. In your adventures you will discover the random fountains and statues and courtyards dotted throughout the university (which would be far more exciting if you weren’t attempting to locate some obscure room).

Phoebe Drake The best part of all of this is that the SRC is run by students, for students. Each year in September, student representatives, including 33 councillors, the President, 7 delegates to the National Union of Students and 10 editors of Honi Soit (the only weekly newspaper in the country) run in election for the privilege of serving a one-year term as a representative. I ran because I believe that all students deserve a high quality education and I am committed to standing up for this. The SRC is a great organisation for anyone with enthusiasm to get involved in. This year the SRC will have campaigns coming out its ears as we take on the issues aﬀecting students at university and we will need your help, your insight and your passion. Ultimately, we can achieve change through working cohesively. Involvement is a big word for many of you who have work, study and other commitments. What it really means is that maybe you come to a BBQ (free food!), or a forum, or participate in meetings and campaigns (if you have extra time). We understand the hectic lifestyle students lead because we are students. When it comes to our education, though, we deserve a high quality standard of teaching and learning that is accessible and achievable. This is why it is our future and our ﬁght.

You will also be wondering if you have made good choices when it comes to your subjects and this is why we have the Counter-Course Handbook: an invaluable insight into the degrees and departments at Sydney University. You will learn what the students before you have taken from certain subjects and which lecturers are the absolute best. It is a not a study guide, per se, but more a guide to studying at Sydney University. This is one of the reasons why the SRC is fantastic: we call it how it is. The SRC at Sydney University represents all 32 000 undergraduate students. We provide representation and advocacy on the issues that impact you. The SRC, for example, has free caseworkers that will help you with any issues you might be having at university, whether that be academic, in regards to youth allowance or tenancy. So if there is a problem, don’t let it sit, come and visit us at our oﬃces in the basement of the Wentworth Building. We also have a free legal service and a second-hand bookshop that will sell textbooks at a discounted price and also buy your textbooks at the start of each semester. Our collectives are extensive and include women’s issues, education, queer, and environment activism, just to name a few!

Contact Phoebe president@src.usyd.edu.au 9660 5222

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Degree Planning We don’t know whether it is that, come enrolment time, students are overwhelmed by the exciting sounding names of subjects, or are just put off by the mind-numbingly boring course requirements document, but degree planning is something that too few students actually devote time and consideration to when it is important. A common piece of feedback in the Counter Course handbook was that many students were being caught out. Degree planning isn’t about locking your future career in at the start of first year, or just listing subjects that you think will make you employable. Degree planning (particularly in more generic degrees) is as much about thinking of the overall experience of University, and the attributes you wish to acquire as a graduate. Let’s face it, it’s also important because your Faculty will fuck you over if you don’t fulfill the occasionally specific requirements of some of their degrees. So, this is our very brief guide based on common experiences of students as found in the Counter Course survey. We hope it helps!

Units you ABSOLUTELY NEED These ones are, generally speaking, the most obvious, but they are also the ones that can be the biggest cluster-fuck to change if you enrol incorrectly. These can roughly be divided into three categories: a. Prerequisites A subject with prerequisites requires you to have completed other subjects in previous years or semesters in order to be eligible to enrol. For example, in order to take ELEC3204, ‘Power Electronics and Applications’ in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, you must first have completed ELEC2104, ‘Electronic Devices and Circuits.’ Sometimes, prerequisites are specific courses, whereas others simply mandate a certain number of credit points (usually junior credit points) in a specific discipline. b. Corequisites A subject with corequisites requires you to complete other units of study at the same time as you are enrolled in that particular unit. For example, to enrol in GEOS3053, ‘AsiaPacific Field School – Assessment A’, you must also enrol in GEOS3054, ‘Asia-Pacific Field School – Assessment B,’ which seems straightforward enough. Typically, corequisites are PAGE 4

only a thing for exchange, internship and Honours units of study, but just make sure your other subjects don’t require them as well or you may be caught out. c. Degree Requirements These are the requirements most often fucked up by students come enrolment time. Many degrees at the University (typically more specialist degrees, practical degrees or the various strange permutations of the B Arts, like the B International and Global Studies) require that you take certain subjects, or a number of subjects in certain disciplines, in order to qualify for your degree. For example, to meet the requirements for the absurd B Political, Economic and Social Sciences (we are so sorry for you if you are already enrolled in this, by the way, what an error from you), you must complete study in Government and International Relations, Political Economy and EITHER Sociology or Anthropology in your first two years, before selecting one of them as your actual major in the third year. CRAZY! You will find many degrees have very specific course requirements, which can all be found in the regulations for those degrees.

Units you will FIND THAT YOU NEED This is where you start to get the flexibility in your degree and you have to make decisions not given to you by your Faculty. To start with the very basics, everyone knows that most subject areas will have first year courses, which are generally quite generic and designed to give you an introduction to the discipline and its subject matter. They will then offer a series of senior units, and potentially advanced and Honours units, which will further refine and specialise your knowledge of the given subject matter. In most instances, you will find that you require twelve junior credit points in a given subject (usually two junior units) in order to major in that subject. Your “major” will then be made up of a specified number of senior units in that particular discipline, which is generally speaking 36. Keep in mind that the requirements for some majors are a little more complicated (e.g. if you wanted to qualify for Professional Practice in Accounting, you will be required to do a different set of units). Once you have yourself a pretty little major, you may like to indulge in some extra academic nourishment, and enrol in an Honours year. Honours is, generally speaking, a research SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

project of some kind on a particularly narrow, and high level subject area. You will need Honours to qualify for a PhD or an MPhil. Some disciplines require that you take more credit points from their subject area if you intend to do Honours than if you just wanted a major in it. For example, to get a Government and International Relations major, you only need 36 credit points in the subject, but you will require 48 credit points should you intend to do Honours. Many subject areas, like Government, also require students to take several preparatory units in their senior years to qualify for Honours. Many people find that the more general undergraduate subjects do not prepare them well for the specificity of the Honours year. For this reason, you should think about picking subjects in your senior years which compliment any areas of interest that you may like to explore in your Honours year. The only other consideration you should give in relation to things that you may find you need is that if you are intending to go into a fairly specialised area of practice in whatever field, you could find that your employment will require (or “highly recommend”) that you have completed certain units of study in your degree. This is particularly true when you are able to specialise in the later years of engineering degrees.

Units that you may WANT This is more a collection of hints and tips that we have picked out of the Counter Course survey this year, about things that you might like to consider when selecting subjects, particularly if you have a bit of room to get creative in subject selection. One thing that you may like to have in your mind, particularly in more generic degrees like B Arts and B Science, is what skills and knowledge you can acquire over your entire three year degree, and what employment opportunities that will present. You should identify, irrespective for the moment of what subject they actually fit into, what skills and attributes you require for your dream profession, and aim for those. Increasingly, employers value graduates with interdisciplinary skills, who show that they can think critically about a wide range of complex ideas. We know what you are thinking. You just love University so much that you wish it wasn’t only confined to two semesters. Well, don’t we have the solution for you! In all seriousness, some students find that Summer and Winter Schools are a good way to catch up on prerequisites if you have cocked up your subject selection. Also, if you are an eager beaver and

can’t wait to get out into the work force, they are a way to rush your degree. You should be wary of a few things first, the first being YOU INSANE PERSON, HOLIDAYS ARE FOR HOLIDAYING. The second is that payment for Summer and Winter Schools can be deferred onto FEE-HELP but it won’t be subsidised, so you will be a bit out of pocket (to the tune of thousands of dollars), so save your pennies. It is often said that sometimes University is just about knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and there is nothing wrong with that. Many of the degrees at USyd provide students with the flexibility to pick subjects which may just randomly tickle their fancy, but are unlikely to define their entire life from this point on. Make sure you pick (at least some…) subjects that interest you, or your degree can become a form of torture befitting the University’s gothic architecture. You know what they say, all Advanced Mathematics and no Manning makes Jack a dull boy. Many students also find that building a semester or two of exchange into their degree (if you can afford it or get financial assistance) is another excellent experience offered by the University. The staff in the International Office are very helpful with all your degree planning, but you should keep in mind things like that you are unlikely to be able to find reciprocal agreements for prerequisite units (though stranger things have been known to happen). This is something you will eventually have to negotiate with the faculty, but you should try to get them all out of the way to just avoid the hassle. This has in no way been a comprehensive guide to subject selection. We don’t claim to be experts in every single degree program or set of prerequisites (but after writing this handbook, we may be doing better than most!). Ultimately, if you have questions you should consult your Faculty. If you find yourself stuck in a rut, don’t stress. The SRC caseworkers, located on level 1 of the Wentworth Building have probably been through your problem before with a hundred other students. Go see them, they’re always able to help. You can also email them at help@src.usyd.edu.au, or phone our office 9660 5222. If you are on one of the satellite campuses, they will be out there for at least one day a week, give us a call to find out when. Happy planning!

Tim Matthews and Al Cameron

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Lies your teachers tell The university never fails to come up with outrageous and unexpected twists of bureaucratic insanity, so what I’m about to provide is not a complete list. It is, however, a decent guide for ﬁrst-time uni students in standard university bullshit, and the lies every Students’ Representative Council USYD s going to hear at least once. Hopefully this guide will help you take everything with a grain of salt.

1. You can’t change your tutorial times ever, not even if you have to care for your elderly, blind onelegged mother This old chestnut’s a particular favourite of the Law faculty, who insist that UNI COMES FIRST OMG even if your 6pm three hour seminar on international haberdashery law conﬂicts with your job, or your caring responsibilities. This is a lie. You can always change your timetable, for whatever reason you want even just not wanting to start before twelve. If the faculty oﬃce is giving you a hard time – just do it online.

2. There will be no extensions on this assignment for anything except the unexpected loss of an organ, and even then it has to be an important one This is also massively untrue. The overwhelming majority of university academics will give you an extension if you ask politely enough. Even if you’re unlucky enough to come across a hard-ass the SRC can help you appeal if you’ve got a halfway legitimate reason. The point is, you shouldn’t feel bullied into not asking for an extension. Its not like you’ve got anything to lose. You’re just trying to avoid handing in a half-arsed essay and actually have a chance to put a bit of thought in and actually (crazily) learn something.

3. Miss the exam, fail the course, no questions asked, get shot in the face for good measure Puﬀ. I once missed an exam worth 60% of the ﬁnal mark because I’m too dumb to read a bus timetable properly. They let me resit it, possibly stunned into helpfulness because I admitted to doing some so idiotic. Ignoring the fact that its relatively essay to fake a family trauma if you’re desperate, most excuses that don’t involved the word ‘hangover’ will get a decent hearing. Even then, if you’re an arts student, you’ve got a shot. The real trick is to be honest. Don’t lie to your lecturers – they’ve heard better excuses than you can think of. Just say what happened, apologise if appropriate and ask for mercy.

Miss an exam and you are responsible for the destruction of the known world.

4. You will fail the course if you don’t talk heaps in tutes, even if you don’t really like speaking in huge groups Tute participation is a joke. Mostly it involves two smartarses yammering away at each other for an hour while everyone else nods awkwardly and pretends they did the readings. Sometimes you’ll be lucky enough to have a tute where people actually discuss things like civilised human beings. Mostly not. Even if you’ve been sitting up the back trying to work out what subject this is the whole time, you can pretty much save your tute participation mark by saying a few relevant things towards the end of semester. If the tutor learns you’re amen, bonus marks for you.

Don’t be put off by the brightly-coloured maniacal pests who assault you on Eastern Avenue every year - the SRC is run by students like you. Aside from dating, come and see us if you’re having any problems! PAGE 6

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If you’re really uncomfortable talking, have a chat to your tutor outside of class. Generally, you can work out something to make things easier for you, like breaking into small groups. Remember, nobody else knows anything about anything anyway.

5. Your mark is final, FINAL DO YOU HEAR ME, FINAL Even if you think you’ve been marked unfairly, or discriminated against, or had to struggle to keep up with your studies because the real world was rudely interrupting, your final mark is final? Filthy lies. This is where the SRC comes in. Come down to our crazy basement offices, and we’ll help you appeal your results. You could be remarked, or receive special consideration, or possible even have the result removed from your academic record. Don’t just suffer in silence. Tell us. We can help.

If you’re too cool for Camperdown, our caseworker goes out to satellite campuses every week. Feed them a scandal to make their trip worth it!

My advice here is DON’T DO IT FOOL! However, that can be easier said than done. The university’s plagiarism policy is not the most consistent thing around. Diﬀerent academics have diﬀerent ideas of what constitutes plagiarism – and so do a lot of students. The SRC is working to develop a fair and reasonable policy on plagiarism with the university – one that focuses on helping students stop nicking other people’s work, other than just immediately throwing them out. If you’ve got plagiarism problems, come to the SRC immediately. We’ll help you get a fair hearing, and represent you against the university. This is nowhere near a comprehensive list of the kind of nonsense that the university will throw at you over the course of your degree. But it’s a start. The point is, the university administrational likes to pretend that there’s cold, hard rules that nobody can or does deviate from. But here in realityland nobody’s perfect, and students fuck up, or have reallife dramas and issues that interfere with their studies. The Counter Course handbook is here to remind you that the university administration are most likely human and not killer androids from outer space, and that there’s always an alternative to what the university says.

Lucy Saunders

6. If you don’t submit the essay by EXACTLY 4.30 you will lose 400% Centrally it’s a good idea to follow the drop-oﬀ deadlines, unless you have an extension. However a lot of faculties wont actually collect the essays until the next morning. So, if you’re desperate, turn up really early the next morning, backdate the cover sheet and deposit it before the staﬀ turns up. There’s no guarantee this’ll work every time, but it’s worth a shot, and when it does work, it’s bloody awesome.

7. Plagiarise, even by accident and you’re out of uni, and you never get a job, and nobody will ever love you

Some university administrators are a bit old-hat. Come and see the SRC at Wentworth for some more spritely service.

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Agriculture The Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources received near-universally positive reviews in this year’s survey. This is the course you should take if you want to make some serious bucks. With one of the highest graduate employment rates in the University, you’ll be qualified to plough through fields of gold. There are a number of degrees offered by the Ag Faculty. Agricultural Economics is a particular stand-out. Research Systems (AGEC3104) and Agribusiness Marketing (AGEC2010) are units to look forward to - students praised them for being relevant and well tuned towards a career in agribusiness. The course structure of degrees in the Ag faculty are predominantly set for the first two years, meaning that you’ll have to stick with the mandated schedule. This fixed course structure tends to be dominated by non-agriculture subjects, which sometimes makes the courses seem a bit directionless. Push through because the subjects become more focused from second year on. The majority of lecturers in this faculty are incredible. Honourable mentions go to Peter Ampt and Dan Tan for expertise and an almost insane commitment to helping students learn. For science-based courses expect to have an incredibly heavy study load with a high number of contact hours, especially in first year, with each unit having multiple lectures, tutorials, and labs per week. It’s easy to fall behind and become swamped with course work, so being organised from the get go is a must. The Faculty also has a habit of setting final exams that take up a crippling percent of your final mark. If exams worth 80% are your thing, though, go right ahead. Student Administration within the faculty is mixed. Staff, including Fortunee Cantrell, are always available and go above and beyond to help students with any issues. Stuff does, however, tend to move slowly within the faculty and students expressed a number of problems with enrolment and special consideration. Get in early to sort out any issues. As part of your degree, you are required to attend at least one faculty excursion to different parts of New South Wales. Get in early and do this in your first year as it helps to give direction to your studies and opens you up to career opportunities. An insider tip is to attend the Southern NSW and Northern NSW excursion in September and January respectively, as these excursions have smaller numbers of attendees, which means you can gain more individual attention and learn a lot more. It also means you don’t have to wait in line for meals! The average cost for field trips is around $200-300, but it’s well worth it by all accounts.

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The Rural Environment (AFNR1001) and Climate and the Environment (ANFR1002) are highly rated first year subjects. They provide a broad general introduction to the agriculture sector in Australia, and give you an early impression of the fields you might want to specialise in later. The problem based learning assignment in each course takes the form of a consultancy report, meaning that you can develop skills that will be used directly on the field once you’re done with uni. The Agriculture Faculty also wins for responding to student feedback. Class sizes had been an issue in the AFNR1001 botany labs; however, when this was brought up with the unit of study co-ordinator, the faculty staff were apparently very welcoming and provided more demonstrators within a week of the concerns being expressed.

Pros: the faculty listens to students (rare) Cons: course costs, but little else (also rare)

Respondents did report, however, that at times the courses are a bit basic. One student complained that there had been multiple lectures in which the class was shown pictures of cows and sheep. Course costs are also an issue. Field trips to the farms at Camden are costly and diﬃcult seeing as it’s so far away. Students also claimed that textbook costs could sometimes approach $450 per semester. That’s huge, especially if you’re ﬁnding it hard to work full-time during semester. If you want a decent ‘root’ in agriculture, then there’s no place better than Sydney Uni. Highly recommended. a

Some lecture theatres are just impractical

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Architecture Architecture at Sydney University is a labour of love. Whether you undertake a Bachelor of Design in Architecture or Bachelor of Design in Computing, you are in for some long, hot hours of design lovin’. According to many survey respondents, the studio essentially becomes a form of accommodation that you can put on HECS. Don’t be fooled by the fact that the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning is housed in a building that has been designed and planned atrociously; there are many things to look forward to in this degree. Despite a crazy workload, students were overwhelmingly positive towards the course content. This is probably because most remarked how the less passionate and more lazy quickly migrate to Manning, drop out and drunkenly design UTS. Those who are left are generally in love with the core of teachers who inspire them to design attractive things in which the rest of us will all end up working or living. N/A to Arts students (unless designing gutters and tarpaulins are course requirements). Your fellow students will quickly become a second family as you navigate your way through the core subjects together. Whereas in other faculties, ‘core’ units generally drive you to remove your limbs with a rusty spatula, those in Architecture are actually ‘fabulous’ and equip you with skills that train you to develop an OCD to make literally everything look better. You will spend about 15 hours a week sitting in the Wilkinson building in lectures and tutorials that are the very deﬁnition of ‘structured fun’. Until you are unleashed from your core units and can choose electives, you and your cohort are all in this together, which creates a great sense of student solidarity in what is a relatively small course.

In a rare bout of pedagogical logic, there are no exams. But don’t crack out the champagne too soon. There are an awful lot of assessments that are an awful lot of work.

their magnitude, assessments appear to be pretty friggin cool. You’ll be experimenting with model construction, sketching, drawing, presentation panels and the like. As one of our respondents recounted, it may be particularly heart breaking to pour forty eight hours of blood, sweat, balsa wood and glue into a complex model only to have your tutor rip it apart, but don’t be disheartened. Think of it as radical editing. More freedom will be found in the electives stage of the degree where you will be given the opportunity to get your head around legitimate technical practices and play around (strictly in the sense that structured fun allows) with innovative technologies. However, students recommend planning your electives ahead of time to ensure you don’t end up with a deficit of skills. Without skirting around the issue, you essentially need to be loaded to complete your degree with ease. The Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning is one of the most horrendous examples of ancillary course costs that range from purchasing tools for drawing to physical building materials. If you are experiencing genuine financial difficulty that affects your ability to perform, come and see one of our caseworkers at the SRC. You will often be eligible for gems such as Youth Allowance, but if you’re just after a quick fifty-dollar loan to tide you over until your tardy employer gets around to paying you, we can help you out with that too. Despite a generally stellar teaching staff, there are some tutors within the department that cop a shellacking from students for treating students inappropriately. What is perhaps more alarming is that students felt unable to voice these concerns to the faculty for ‘fear of retribution’. If you ever come across a similar situation that prohibits you from identifying yourself as the complainant, contact the SRC. We have a range of staff with the experience to find appropriate courses of action to address the problem.

Survey respondents frequently recommended that you start any tasks as soon as you get them, because no matter how much of a design gun you think you are, they will take longer than you think. The night-before method is absolutely out of the question in Architecture. Unlike some Arts students, it is supremely diﬃcult to copy and paste grand sketches, add a few bogus references and call it a day.

Architecture: you’re doing it wrong.

If you need a hand with your assignments, then by all accounts the tutors are fantastically available, helpful and savvy operators who are often pleasingly more hands-on than you would expect from a university faculty. Despite S T U D EN T S R EPR E S EN TAT I V E CO U N C I L , U N I V ER S I T Y O F S Y D N E Y

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Ancient history

Archaeology

One would be hard pressed to ﬁnd a more universally loved faculty than Ancient History. Classes and staﬀrooms appear to be teeming with passionate and dedicated people who get a serious kick out of all the cool shit that happened ages ago. If you have a penchant for Spartan homoeroticism or get turned on by the ancient piles of Roman rubble, then rest assured that Sydney University is at the top of the Ancient History game.

Students really dig the Archaeology department. Or at least those who emerged from their burrows to complete the Counter Course survey seem to. Students gushed with appropriate and state-approved levels of respect and unbridled love over many of the staﬀ and the range of subjects continues to impress and delight all those who like to get down and dirty.

Apparently the most delicious part of the department is the staff. Lecturers and tutors are overwhelmingly praised for being both impressively knowledgeable and quirky. As per the trend, subjects in first year tend to be very foundational and broad. The content in both Foundations for Ancient Greece and Foundations for Ancient Rome ranges quite haphazardly from philosophy to archaeology to literature amongst other disciplines, with specialist lecturers chartered to provide expert opinions. Although the organization of these courses may seem disjointed to many first year students, ANHS1600 and ANHS1601 are not reflective of the sort of narrowing direction that underscores the process of specializing in senior years. These subjects are generally hailed as providing a basis for critical thinking that is cross-disciplinary, facilitated by often engaging tutorials that follow an academic schedule associated with, but separate from the lectures. Shout outs go especially to Alistair Blanshard (who is described as being a giant teddy bear as well as the perfect teacher), Margaret Miller and Richard Miles.

’Giant teddy bear’ and ’perfect teacher’ Alistair Blanshard in party attire

Assessment schedules in Ancient History are varied, but most often reported as balanced and appropriate. Perhaps one of the most attractive aspects of studying old stuﬀ is that there is so much of it. Accordingly, students are often given a choice in their major essay, ranging from bathing etiquette to the foundations of democracy. In an intriguing bout of irony and a sad indictment on other faculties, the Ancient History department is very much up with the times. All lectures are recorded and academic resources readily available and accessible online. These additional resources are often necessary for the less informed scholar who neither took nor gunned HSC Ancient History. One respondent oﬀered the sage, albeit academically sacrilegious advice to check out the Wikipedia page of each subject before your tutorial each week. We humbly recommend you do this in conjunction to the actual readings. Good choice. PAGE 10

Other faculties could afford to take a leaf out of Archaeology’s book and design courses around the specialties of the lecturers. Students were generally thrilled with quality and knowledgeable teaching staff, with Meg Miller again taking out the gong for being not only a top notch lecturer, but also supplying students with a range of suitably horrific archaeology jokes and a soothing maternal voice that will lull you into an education. Annie Clarke receives glowing reports for her practical ARCA2601 Lab Methods course, and if the generality of more junior units left you craving a deeper excavation, then take a look at ARCA2603 Archaeology of Society. In this subject you will also encounter the rare and exotic experience of choice. Do not be alarmed, the freedom to choose your own essay is actually quite pleasant. However, students complained of overlapping content particularly between ARCA2611 and ARCA2612 so perhaps seek some variety elsewhere. Other downsides include a restrictive budget that limits students’ ability to really plunge themselves in their studies, with students chained up in an Old Teachers College dungeon the size of a foot. Not actually, but the department’s budget has been a little cramped. In good news for players, a field school is on the cards for 2012. Watch out for ARCA2621 Advanced Archaeology Practicum that will take students to Port Arthur during semester break to be chained up, shot and experience the excitement of an actual dig. Written work detailing your steamy love affair with shovels will be due in semester 2. Entrance is strict, limited and only for the best and brightest, with absolutely essential prerequisites that can be found on the website or Student Self Administration. If you reckon ARCA2621 sounds like your cup of soil, then plan to not only take, but also gun the prerequisite units. In addition to this exciting development, some intriguing new subjects will be on offer in 2012 including Splendor of Ancient China and Maritime Archaeology, taught by the highly regarded Martin Gibbs. Some students reported feeling slightly narcoleptic during ARCA1001 lectures, but if you have a real hankering for some authentic archaeology, the department holds weekly seminars in three streams of archaeology which provide a chance to hear about your lecturers secret lives as researchers and the latest developments in the world of archaeology. Plus, what better place to pick up? SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Anthropology

Art History

Students who take anthropology must have a thing for brownies, because the subject tends to be a bit half-baked. Anthropology is about as good as this joke. No, seriously – Anthropology is not one of Sydney University’s strong points. At the end of last year the department was nearly merged out of existence due to declining enrolments.

Hey there, hipster kid! Do you feel so many feelings that you are only ever truly understood by abstract modern art? Great. Meet an entire lecture theatre full of carbon copies of you!

At a junior level, lectures tend to be overcrowded. Don’t worry, by the time you get to second year this won’t be a problem: more than half your cohort will have dropped out. Cultural Difference (ANTH1001) was flagged as a pretty shoddy introduction to the discipline. We got quite a few irate first years panning the subject:

“ANTH1001 was terrible. Extremely dry content. Boring lecturer. Unstimulating tutorials.” “The content was mind-numbing. Patronisingly repititive, vague and dull.” Several respondents were incredibly passionate in their defence of lecturer Gaynor Macdonald, but made clear that she could do little to enliven what was just a boring unit. Unfortunately ANTH1001 is prerequisite for all senior units of study, because the second semester junior unit, Anthropology and the Global (ANTH1002), is by all accounts fantastic. One student summed it up: “Great content. Great lecturer. Great tutor. Could not ask for more from a unit of study.” The topics explored by the unit, globalization and its implications on all aspects of life, were judged to be extremely relevant and upto-date by respondents. Snaps to lecturers Terry Woronov and Neil Maclean for embracing technology. They have students post deﬁnitions online and it goes towards their participation marks. Students were really enthused, and said they thought that this structured approach might ensure all students ﬁnish up with a solid understanding of the subject matter.

Lets get one thing out of the way right now – this is not a practical art course. You don’t get to even so much as fingerpaint or take Hipstamatic photos. The lack of practical components is viewed both positively and negatively depending on who you’re talking to. There are certainly ways around it, for instance in ARHT1002, gallery visits ‘keep tutorials fresh and engaging,’ which is good to hear. Other students recommend getting some work experience at galleries to complement your degree if you are really serious. On the whole, Art History students looked up from their Chai just long enough to tell us that they absolutely freaking love this discipline. Staff got uniformly positive praise, described as ‘Fantastic, enthusiastic lecturers and tutors,’ with special mentions to Bruce Issacs, Roger Benjamin and Mary Roberts. There were a few exceptions, though, for typically droll artsy types who apparently left sarcastic comments on essays and assignments – gee. Thanks guys. You might have picked up from our (gently, loving, caring, helpful?) sarcasm that some people view Art History as a ‘soft’ major. Two comments on this: (1) Those who work hard at it still work their asses off and many find the content really challenging (such as Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art) and (2) if you are the shit guy in the tutorial who is there because he is too drugged out for any other major – Fuck right off. You are actually the worst human. In terms of the accessibility of this subject it is a bit so-so. Text books can be extremely expensive, but the Shaeffer Library is a tranquil space second only to Eden, and has a lot of resources. The use of technology can sometimes seem stuck in the Renaissance. It’s a bit hit and miss with some lecturers point blank refusing to record any lectures, or even make lecture slides available online.

Think we’re wrong? Well instead of just thinking, howsabout ﬁlling in the survey next year? Nobody in second year actually responded.

Hipster pose or just an amputee? Hopefully both.

Licence to complain revoked.

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English English requires a lot of reading. If you hadn’t guessed that by now, we suggest university isn’t really the place for you. The consistent message was that English was very rewarding, but a huge drain on your time. If you want to avoid being torn apart in tutes, you’ll usually need to plow through at least one huge book every week or you simply won’t find time to catch up. Do the work. Otherwise you’ll graduate with nothing to show for it but a $30,000 HECS debt and a glossy piece of paper. Fun fact: if you hated English in high school, you probably have no motivation to do it at uni – which is a shame, because it’s almost completely different. HSC isn’t English; it’s rotelearning a collection of buzzwords. If you try to hand in something similar at uni, you’ll be laughed at. Time to forget the following: Module, Composer (at uni it’s the author, duh), Textual integrity (what the fuck even is that?), ’techniques’ and, of course, belonging. English students were generally satisfied with the standards of their tutors and lecturers. This is a department with a serious commitment to teaching quality. Without a doubt, the best part of English is the tutes – you come into contact with dozens of different perspectives on the text that you would never have thought of, and you will use them. Seriously, go to class. Heads up, though: if you don’t read the book your tutor will know. In that case, only go to class if it could mean an absent fail. You won’t have any idea what anyone else is saying, and then you’ll accidently condemn Tim Winton for being a white supremacist (oops…) With rotating lecturers, the junior units offer you a different take every week. We bid goodbye to the old first-year compulsory, Narratives of Romance and Adventure (ENGL1002). Many of us first fell in love with Chaucer, Marlowe and Swift while doing NORA and this is a bit sad for a lot of us. This will be the first year of Reading English Texts (ENGL1009) being offered, but it sounds dangerously like the HSC. If it doesn’t meet your expectations, let us know but also take heart that most other subjects are pretty great. Constructing the Fictive Self (ENGL1026) received mixed reviews. WARNING: Not for the sexually conservative. As one student said, it’ll upset people “squeamish around willies, gay sex, sex between a man and a child (wait, who isn’t disturbed by that?). Very enlightening subject, would recommend to anybody fresh out of catholic school/nunnery.” It was generally felt, though, that Victoria Burrows had put to together a refreshingly relevant course that explores (as per the title) how selfhood is constructed in literature.

Semler is a god. He is so damned appealing that “as he reads to you about Hermaphroditus, you wish you could make like a water nymph and be glued to him forever.” Barry Spurr’s course, Reading Poetry (ENGL2650), was highly rated by our respondents. This man lectures on John Donne and is almost as good as the material he deals with. He is fantastic. Also nearly too tweed to function. One criticism lobbied at English academics is that they often don’t take advantage of technology that is available, with English being one of the most technophobic departments around. If you dig Shakespeare, then ENGL2604 with Huw Griffiths will be right up your alley. He’s an amazing lecturer for Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama subjects, and recommended by almost everyone. A major criticism of English over the years has been its failure to provide meaningful progression throughout the degree. That meant that you’d study the same type of courses in third year as you would in second, which would generally make your major a directionless stew.

Tweed jackets are compulsory for studying English.*

*Bow tie ownership is a prerequisite for honours

Well, good news – the English Dept has heard its students out and decided to update its degree structure fresh for new enrolments in 2012. Senior level units are now divided into ‘Core’ and ‘Extension’ units. Core units are larger, teamtaught subjects (generally 2 x 1 hr lectures +1 x 1 hr tutorial) which explore a broader area representative of the discipline. 18 credit points of senior level English or Australian Literature are prerequisite for Extension Units, which offer a chance to explore something like the Canterbury Tales for a whole semester and give you room to specialise before you get to honours. The English Department prides itself on the strength of its honours programme. Fully consider it – it’s a good idea. English majors are sometimes labeled “the archetypal arts student wankers”, but really everyone knows that’s Art History. If you hated HSC but love reading books, then doing English at Sydney Uni might be for you.

At senior level, you’ll get the full stretch of lecturers. Liam PAG E 12

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Film Studies

Gender Studies

For a department that is lampooned as the quintessential Arts major, designed specifically for couch potatoes, a life of Film Studies doesn’t seem all that bad. Fortunately, the government provides a comprehensive service for graduates with a Film Studies major - Centrelink can be contacted on 13 2850. The department itself is the size of a nuclear family, with a grand total of three academics that apparently boast a wealth of knowledge about all things film. All three are reportedly engaging lecturers, replete with eccentricity and whose hobbies include sneering at the mainstream plebs who frequent the dirty Greater Union multiplexes. The Film Studies major is offered through the Department of Art History and requires a number of prerequisites in order to attain a certificate that will forever condemn you to deconstructing every single movie you will ever watch ever.

Last year’s Counter-Course told students to “Get. On. Board” with first-year Gender Studies (the first time the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies had offered first-year units). Well, it seems that people did. So many people, in fact, that it led to lines outside lecture halls, people sitting in the aisles of carslaw and one of the best first year units that you can take at university. Jennifer Germon honours the slow and steady tortoise approach to lectures: jam-packing in content, but worth every minute. Stick through the first half of GCST1602 and you’ll soon be that annoying friend who exposes the heteropatriarchal normativity of seemingly innocuous actions and events in everyday life...and at parties. Perhaps the team was underresourced but they seemed to genuinely care for their students. Shout outs to first time tutors Sophie Johnson and Tim Laurie, who let us know that it’s all about the U.N.I.T.Y and posed the hard question about who we were calling bitches. It was generally felt that there was a good balance between theory and mindfucks, so do take if you can.

According to the university, the department explores the ‘history of cinema, film theory and criticism, film aesthetics and style.‘ According to students, the department explores movies. Lots of them. So don your indie lederhosen, throw on a hipster paisley shirt, sculpt an ironic chin Bodies, Sexualities and Identities Exams for Film Studies are both moustache (chinstache?) and get your (GCST2607) is the course that convinces rigorous and demanding Film Studies Major butt down to the most to major in Gender Studies. The unit nearest arthouse cinema. You may be works through theory of sexuality and embodiment and has surprised that filling out your film knowledge will cost a amazing material, interesting guest lecturers and sensitive bitchload if you really want to see some cool foreign arty shit. and engaged tutors. Props to Dr Kane Race for a solid course. It is also supremely difficult to navigate your way to a Film Intimacy, Love and Friendship (GCST2610), with Melissa Studies major. Of the four compulsory core units you need to Gregg, was a “really genuinely interesting and practical complete, two are offered by the Art History department and course.” Assessments are simple and lectures are recorded the other two by Film Studies. You will then need to study so attendance is low, but it is by all accounts a genuinely at least two of the elective units, which range from obscure interesting and practical course. foreign cinema to religious film. Basically, watch Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Passion of the Christ and you’re done. Another benefit of the Department is that technophobes are rare. Lectures are usually put online, and readings are Perhaps due to the lack of staff, or the eccentricity of those available on the library site, so it’s cheap and flexible to major who do work in the department, students report a degree of in. disorganization. Assessments are sometimes not organized in a timely fashion and objectives lack clarity. If you find yourself THIS actually got an 83: The apparent flooded by controversial and contradictory assessment deviation from the hetero-normative interpretations, speak to the unit coordinator. They will be premise of How I Met Your Mother is in setting the criteria and marking guides. If you honestly feel that your work has not been marked adequately, appeal. actuality a case of the hetero-normative Appeal the shit out of it - see page 48. The Arts faculty has end justifying the ostensibly transgender generally thorough and accessible appeals procedures that means, thereby reinforcing the non-static usually ensure your genius work is not wasted. Don’t hesitate nature of Barney’s hyper-masculinity. to jump on down to the Wentworth SRC offices and have a chat to one of our caseworkers. -Max Schintler GCST1612

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Government Literally nobody likes Government students. Even law students. Sitting through a Government tute is about as enjoyable as Michael Spence repeatedly engaging you in conversation. Despite the often-insufferable pontifications of many students, the Department of Government and International Relations received almost universally positive reviews. A broad range of subject material as well as a penchant for indulging the ridiculous, the current and the theoretical makes studying in this department positively West Wing-esque. The units offered in first year tend to be extremely general, with expansive exploration of realist, liberal, critical and all sorts of neo-variant theories thereupon. Many of the first year lectures are reported to be soporifically boring and repetitive that will most likely result in a radical lefty or righty asking the lecturer provocative questions and then proceeding to mistake themselves for an academic and answer their own question. Humour these subjects, people and lecturers. There are better times ahead. However, Geopolitics is given a good wrap despite mixed reviews of Diarmuid Maguire, noted for his unique amalgam of Irish wit and toxically boring drawl that makes his lectures a bizarre cross between the Easter Rebellion and a nap. He is apparently redeemed by a stellar performance in Europe in the World. As for Anna Boucher, one respondent had this to say - ‘her one woman quest to turn students into miniature versions of herself is going along swimmingly.’ Take from that what you will. Basically, if you enjoy readers and textbooks thicker than some of the radicals in your tute, then you’ll have a ball in first year. GOVT 2424 Chinese Politics takes out the gong for depth of content delivered by genius lecturer James Reilly, described as ‘hilarious and unpredictable. Speaking in an American accent one moment, yelling out phrases in Chinese the next.’ This guy sounds like a circus of fun. GOVT2611 Capitalism & Democracy in East Asia is also a gem, incidentally lectured by the one and only Reilly. Steer clear of Environmental Politics unless you get off on weekly workloads that the Chinese labour sector would struggle to knock over. Yet again students have gushed over Media Politics taken by Peter Chen, who apparently answers questions via twitter or facebook. What a hip guy. Gil Meron seems one to avoid, John Brookfield needs some time to mellow in your political psyche (and you can apparently hear the inner workings of his lungs through the microphone. Bonus for Biology students!) whilst Ryan Griffiths is a hoot if you can filter through the copious amounts of ‘m’kay’s that begin and end his every sentence. Most tutorials in Government will be one of three things: so silent that everyone feels more awkward than Judas at a disciple reunion, dominated by one radical fascist and one PAG E 14

diehard Trotskyite or (rarely) enjoyable and engaging. Which one of these you get landed with will depend heavily on the animal training experience of your tutor. Shout-outs are in order for Patrick Hurley, Shazia Lateef and Nick Bromfield, all of who apparently facilitate challenging and structured discussion and are always available to answer questions. Students passionately reported their desire to strangle law/ government students. If nothing else, Government is an exercise in self-control. Less rave reviews came flooding in regarding Sharif Shuja who communicates poorly, picks favourites and, according to the blunter fans, is generally a terrible teacher. Remember, if you don’t want to sit in weekly hours of silence, you need to do your readings. Don’t be intimidated by people who have formed opinions, it probably means they’ve just skimmed ahead in the bricky reader.

Government tutorials peaceful diplomacy

promote

The United States Studies Centre is also partially integrated with the Department and receives rave reviews. A bastion of private funding whose staff luxuriates in the newly decorated Institute building, the USSC offers some excellent courses such as US in the World and Global America. Both are run by Geoffrey Garrett, who is obviously one of the brainiest lecturers on campus. The reason his intelligence is so blaringly, oppressively obvious is because most lectures are consumed by his often-condescending opinions that are, by definition, at odds with everyone else’s. Nevertheless, both courses are extremely intriguing and feature weekly guest lecturers, attracting stars such as John Howard, Tom Friedman and Peter Hartcher. Unfortunately, Garrett’s voice still occupies most of the lecture as he hacks away at the ridiculous opinions of any students who have mustered the courage to speak. The content in USSC2602 Introduction to US Politics is loved almost as much as the lecturer Brendan O’Connor. All in all, the US Studies Centre and its subjects are incredibly magnetic and very innovative in teaching practice.

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History Be prepared for a shock. University trains you to do history, rather than just read it. That means a lot more source reading, much less parroting the arguments of historians. At junior level, Australian History from Colonies to Nation (HSTY1089) is incredible. The lecturer, Richard Waterhouse, doubles as tutor and makes you realize two weeks in that Australia’s past is so much more interesting than the bitter scars of Year 10 history would have you believe. John Gagne, who took Renaissance and Reformation (HSTY1031), apparently had “so much knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject that he made it ten times more interesting than the source material should make it.” In first semester, American History from Lincoln to Clinton (HSTY1076) is a solid choice, with lecturer Stephen Robertson talking kiwi at a million miles a minute (but all of it golden). Tutorials are by far the best part of studying history at Sydney Uni. This is because, while lectures usually present one interpretation of history, tutorials focus on thematic interpretation of evidence. This gives you room to go to war with other nerds over tiny, unsettled controversies arising from the sources. Small differences in interpretation often lead to fierce clashes of ideologies and personalities, and you’ll often gain as much from discussion as you will from your own study. A passionate tutor often makes the difference between a course being mediocre and a course being what one student described as the “educational equivalent of coming back week after week to have dog-droppings smeared over your face.” Shout-outs to David Cunningham and Alicia Simmons, “legends” according to one student. That said, many tutors are postgrad students and their inexperience shows. A heads up: in first year, your tutes will likely be so overcrowded and full of opinionated douchebags that constructive debate sometimes slips into the realm of screaming match followed by awkward silence when your tutor intervenes.

Students say: argue in tutorials, check out Peace and Conﬂict Studies, do your readings There is probably no better place in the world to study Australian history than at Sydney University. The department has a higher concentration of world-renowned authorities than any other. The other beneﬁt is that, unlike European or American history, all of the source material is in Australia and a lot easier to dig up. Shout-outs go to Penny Russell – we had nearly ten people describe her as “the best lecturer I have ever had.” By all accounts she demands a lot as a teacher, but she does this while remaining really personally approachable and helpful. Other favourites include Living Memory (HSTY2627)

with Richard White, which oﬀers a unique spin on a very diverse range of course material.

Warning: students found honours in history to be “disorientating,” “a waste of time” and “probably the worst decision I’ve ever made.” If you can, check out the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Unfortunately for undergraduates, the centre only offers one second-year unit: History and Politics of War and Peace (PACS2002) taught by Judith Keene. Tutes in PACS are notorious for fiery debates that often go over the brink between peace and conflict themselves. Many students said that they had the best discussions of their whole degree in PACS, and that it was one of the few units that provided really good grounding for honours thesiswork. Get. On. Board. While first and second-year units are generally fantastic, it all falls apart in third-year. Sydney’s history department used to be internationally-renowned for a simple reason: unlike other Australian universities, an honours student graduated with the skills they actually needed to be an historian. This was because any history student who wanted to go on to honours had to complete a number of pre-honours, advanced third-year units that trained you to be a scholar. These were recently subject to devastating course cuts, with only one pre-honours unit remaining: Writing History (HSTY2691). By ‘remain’ we mean that it’s still a pre-req for honours, but it bears little resemblance to the old, hands-on units of the past. Think HSC History Extension on crack – it’s a survey of the philosophy behind different approaches to history (cultural, social, diplomatic, gender, etc.). While one student said he “loved the easy marks,” the general consensus was that it sacrificed the practical research skills you’ll desperately need for honours in favour of “fascinating but useless” theory. One respondent summed it up: “A lack of progression in pursuit of a major has been incredibly frustrating, resulting in studying the same content alongside 2nd year students and no standard accretion of knowledge and ability other than between first year and senior years as a group.” Students warn that doing honours in history is “disorientating,” “a waste of time” and “probably the worst decision I’ve ever made.” Let’s be blunt, this is why: while the chance to do serious independent research is exciting, you’ll need to improvise most of your research skills on the job. You’ll have no idea what you’re doing. If you fancy yourself the next Manning Clark, consider going to a history department at a university like La Trobe or Melbourne that actually values teaching. Maybe just major in something else.

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Arts Koori Centre

INGS

Indigenous Australian Studies is a growing discipline at Sydney University, run through the Koori Centre. While it has a relatively small enrolment, you can look forward to tiny class sizes, low course costs and a tight-knit cohort.

International and Global Studies is not a real degree. It’s an Arts degree for people who got high ATARs. Accept it. Now that you’re here, you might be tempted to simply transfer out of the degree. We recommend it: International and Global Studies is not an academic discipline, so you’ll lose very little from not taking the hodge-podge of INGS units on oﬀer.

The Koori Centre is in the process of expanding, with a new focus on undergraduate enrolment. Over the next two years the Koori Centre has been given the go ahead to create a number of new subjects – almost double what they had previously. They will also be offering honours for the first time in 2013. Indigenous Australian Studies is only open to students from second year on, with KOCR2600 required as a prereq for all other units. While Introduction to Indigenous Australia (KOCR2600) is apparently extremely comprehensive and thought-provoking, it’s also compulsory for Social Work students which makes tutorials a bit grueling. You’d think kids studying Social Work would be passionate about indigenous issues, but apparently a lot of them show poor form and just sit there silently. Generally, subjects give a solid historical and theoretical grounding to the issue and then apply that to intensive case studies of programs and policies in communities. Survey respondents said this was good for people interested in public policy & community development, and recommended they take Indigenous Health and Communities (KOCR2603) and Comparative Indigenous School Experience (KOCR3614). It’s also recommended that you keep an eye out for subjects with field trips – they put the abstract in context, and give you some hands-on experience with the subject matter. Koori Centre is small, tight knit, and all the academics take what they teach extremely seriously. A popular lecturer is Leah Lui-Chivizhe, but students warn that some other academics can be a bit disorganized. Your subject may take a few weeks to warm up, so stick with it and you’ll often encounter the most interesting content of your degree. You’ll also often find 50% of your assessment is your half hour tute presentation – so be wary if you hate public speaking.

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You’ll start with INGS1001 (Power and Money in Global Society) in Semester 1. By all accounts John Brookfield teaches a solid, well-structured course that does a good job of combining disciplines and never becomes overwhelming. For a first year course it’s surprisingly dull. To quote one student, “I have one thing to say of this INGS1001…meh.” INGS1002 (Global Culture and Society) is the absolute worst course you could ever do at uni. Let one (very representative) student tell it how it is: “We were forced to deal with incompetent lecturers and tutors and specifically a very rude, callous and inflexible unit of study coordinator. Special mention must be made of Dr. Sheleyah Courtney who must be the most foul and rude lecturer (and tutor as well for most) I have ever had to deal with. She has absolutely no respect for other people and the way she dealt with problems was appalling. If this course were eliminated entirely, the University would be doing all future INGS students a serious favour.” Another student said that the feedback given on essays was unbelievably bad and that the Unit of Study Co-ordinator made seeking feedback on essays too hard and too upsetting to even be considered. What even. You’ll then get to second year, when you’ll do Transnational Spaces and Networks (INGS2601). It’s a shambles of throwntogether material supposedly pertaining to our knowledge of the globe. Then again, if you haven’t transferred out by second year you probably deserve it. INGS3601, though, is not so shockingly bad. The guest lecturers are meant to be really engaging, and as lame as Model UN is, you get to do an awesome role play activity for half a semester! Yay! Don’t you just love forking out crippling HECS debt for useless shit? You probably didn’t want to do ‘just Arts,’ but unless you’re a snob just do a BA.

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Languages If you’re looking for an easy credit or a unit to ﬁll in, take Art History. Languages are one of the few disciplines in the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences that require consistent work and revision. The staﬀ of the Italian department are well-loved by their students; each has a distinctly personal teaching style and are always willing to answer students’ questions. Be warned, though, there is little in the way of tasks to help students practise their listening skills - this is something you will have to diligently tackle in your own time. Francesco Borghesi (who also takes some killer cultural units) and Cristiana Palmieri get shout-outs as being understanding, humorous and ensuring that all students have their head around the grammar. Antonella Beconi seems to be an acquired taste, though: she takes an immersion approach to language learning, speaking and accepting Q/As almost exclusively in Italian, which solves the problem of sometimes inadequate speaking and listening practice (and her charade-like gesticulations amuse no end, while actually assisting to convey meaning and form helpful lingual-action associations in your mind), but leaves some students feeling that they have to work harder at grammar outside of class.

PRO TIP: Dont choose a language if youre after a vege arts subject. You will regret it. In French, our respondents were gushing in praise for their tutors. At junior level, Jacqueline Marget was described as “the single most amazing teacher/person ever”. Sonia Wilson and FRNC2612 also got a great rap, giving what feels like a solid grounding in French grammar. The book which French students had to study in class, however, was fairly uninspiring, for all that it’s good to be reading a native francophone book. Defying their reputation for machine-like eﬃciency, the German war machine has a reputation for time-wasting and general chaos. One of the strengths of the German Department is that there are no lectures (only tutes), so you spend as much time as possible getting drilled face-to-face. Unfortunately, German also has an unhealthy obsession with ridiculously narrow assessments that don’t examine understanding or actual speaking skills, but instead require you to devote all the time you could spend actually learning the language to rote-learning a whole bunch of saurkraut-bogglingly speciﬁc vocab.

The word ‘feedback’ must also not translate very well into the language, because German gets an absolute fail mark for not letting students keep their assessment tasks. After a quick 5 minute look-over, they were taken back. Many students felt this meant they could not improve from their mistakes. One thing the German Department does pride itself on is teaching. GRMN1111 with Andrea Bandhauer was “absolutely phenomenal” by all accounts – she’s described as engaging, prepared and just an all-round brilliant educator. GRMN1122 with Annika Johannsen is apparently even more krautalicious. The class is smaller which is an instant plus, but Annika is apparently amazing at explaining complex grammar in a way that made it super simple and is “just awesome to talk to about the random goings on of Germany.” Pro-tip: If you’re pretty sure you’ll be sticking with your study of a language, buy a large, comprehensive dictionary and a thesaurus, it’s a worthwhile investment that saves you buying a smaller dictionary and upgrading it later. Insider info: Take advantage of the languages lab - it has all kinds of helpful shit, apart from being generally deserted. THE TRUTH: As the only Arts discipline that requires work, you need to be prepared to put the time in. Do. Your. Homework. Go to your tutes, I guarantee that you WILL learn something every class, and that if you don’t go to even one, you will only create new mountains of work for you to do in order to catch up.

Many students struggle to conquer one language

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Linguistics

Media

Linguistics is a bit of a niche. Kids who grow up declaring they want to be linguistics majors are generally pretty rare, and all of them end up in structured, enunciated tutorials at Sydney University. Despite controversy over staﬀ cuts in 2011, Linguistics continues to oﬀer all sorts of weird and wonderful ways to discover everything about language without necessarily learning one.

Enrolling in MECO at Sydney University is a little bit like buying milk at a boutique supermarket and discovering that not only was it cheaper, it wouldn’t have given you diarrhea if you’d just bought it around the corner. You probably think it’s going to taste all boutique and classy, but by all accounts UTS oﬀers a much more practical and better regarded brand of milk/media and journalism degree. (Disclaimer: degrees from the University of Sydney are fully pasteurized and homogenized.) But worry not; there are some truly redeeming features to the Media and Communications degree.

As a linguistics student, you will spend most of your time in the Transient Building, which appears to have been purchased from Bunnings during the 1960s shortly after which Colourbond threw up on it. The two introductory units in linguistics get rave reviews, with LNGS1001 being taught by the ‘god among men’ Bill Foley. One student was puzzled as to why a statue of Foley had not yet been erected in the Transient Building. LNGS1002 differs violently in content and delivery from the 1001 course, with weekly assignments worth 3% ensuring proficiency in self-flagellation by the end of semester. Be prepared for this magnificent workload. Assessment policy and efficiency is apparently not the forte of the Linguistics department. Some students reported being kept completely in the dark about exam content and structure, whilst others complained that there are no clear objectives in some courses, with semesters spent bumbling through ‘pointless analyses of Gossip Girl DVD covers’. For those tweenage fangirls enamoured by this prospect, think again. Lecturers in Systemic Functional Linguistics such as Monika Bednarek are described as ‘horrifically dull’. So much so that one particularly passionate respondent volunteered to show the SRC a powerpoint to detail just how bleak these classes can be and to ‘prevent confused first years from falling into Monika’s clutches’. Course materials are very expensive and are usually necessary to avoid being that ill-informed gronk in tutorials. Cue plug for the SRC’s second hand bookstore on Level 3 Wentworth, next to the International Students Lounge. The more senior units vary wildly in quality with Discourse Analysis being lampooned along with the unbelievably dull-sounding Functional Grammar. For those with a hardcore fetish for syntax, you’ll feel right at home in the Linguistics department. One thing to keep in mind is that inventing long words to describe newly discovered linguistic concepts of which nobody really understands the complexity, takes time. Workloads range from crazy to insane and assessment schedules are generally not for the faint hearted. But then I guess you didn’t take linguistics because it was your plan B when you couldn’t become a fireman.

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Firstly, if you’re passionate about your media philosophy, then the course (especially in first year) is very enriching and covers theory from Freud to feminism. Whilst this may not initially appear to be of any practical use, the rationale behind offering such units is to provide conceptual awareness about what you write. Lecturers are also reported to be young. This doesn’t necessarily mean bad teaching; it does mean that most are not jaded or rusted on to the industry after thirty years of quality reporting for Today Tonight. There is also a certain level of flexibility that gives students a break from hardcore journo ambitioning and allows you to take majors outside of the specialized units. Common advice is to seek employment within the media industry to complement your study and prepare you for the demands of an internship in fourth year.

Pro-tip: get a part-time job somewhere in the media industry to complement your study. It may be your only shot at employment. Despite many complaints about assignments being gargantuan tasks that would ordinarily require a whole department of minions to complete, many are killer fun. How many students can say they get to produce their own radio show? Certainly more than the number who bothered to ﬁll out the Counter Course survey. Interviews for portfolio articles can often be rewarding and interesting, and a nice counterpoint to the overwhelmingly bleak deconstruction of postmodern writing and the like that oppresses the rest of your degree. Online Media is described as a crock, whilst other disappointments include Media Relations and Principles of Media Writing. On the administrative side of the fence, lecture slides and recordings remain generally unavailable to students, and there are often speciﬁc requirements for certain subjects. Ensure you research thoroughly and early what you may be required to take in order to major in a particular discipline, because switching mid-degree causes many headaches. Remember, if you need any advice on how to rectify any subject selection screw-ups, the SRC is not only available but also hankering for your inquiry. We are lonely. SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Sociology There are the subjects that students love or hate, and then there’s sociology. Sociology is one of those middle-road subjects that you only really take if you have no other choice. Critics have a lot to say about sociology: it’s too left wing, it’s useless, it’s so un-vocational that it hurts your chances of working in retail. As one student said, “sociology creates a sort of group consciousness where sociology students are fully aware of its shortcomings but do it anyway because they’re already in third year and cant change oh god what have I done.” The consensus was that first year was something to be endured. Introduction to Sociology 1 and 2 (SCLG 1001 and 1002) have around 1000 students enrolled, which means that tutorial classes can be up to 20 people. It can be intimidating for first-year students who are shy about speaking up in big groups, and makes it difficult to have your word in classes. This is shit, especially since you’re marked for participation. While students tended to be enthusiastic about sociology as a discipline, many also felt that quite a few units were taught to the lowest common denominator. Sociology of Childhood and Youth (SCLG2613) is a fairly mundane course, which fails to give a broad idea of the disciplines. It also regularly infuriates its students by devoting a whole lecture to teaching essay writing and referencing, at a really basic level. As one student said, “if you didn’t already know that stuff, you wouldn’t (hopefully) be in 2nd year. We’re studying kids, we’re not kids.” Totally unstimulating content, as well. While Sociological Theory and Practice (SCLG3602) was well taught and structured, material was seen as quite repetitive of what you would have already done in Social Inquiry: Qualitative Methods (SCLG2602). The course was also seen as slow, although group work and feedback are apparently quite comprehensive. Contemporary sociological theory (SCLG3601) with Melinda Cooper is in a league of its own in the department. “Challenging, thought provoking, lecturer was completely engaged. THE single best undergraduate course I have done at usyd.” It is also a very small course, which enables fantastic discussion. The format of a 2 hour seminar directly followed

by a tutorial means that focus is high, with a very engaging and stimulating 3 hours. Readings are apparently also chosen with care, and are highly readable. Our respondents seem to have a slightly creepy obsession with Dr Laura Beth Begg, described by one student as “like a stern aunt who secretly gives you candy.” Apparently, all the “annoying shitty bits about sociology (that it is wanky, irrelevant, etc) are completely turned around by her. She makes research and theorising relevant and interesting, and constantly links it back not only to things that are real and tangible and close to home, but also exciting and engaging.” We recommend taking her courses, Social Inequality in Australia (SCLG2604) and Sociology of Religion (SCLG2626). Sociology does equip you – if you do the right units – to comprehend the world better and understand human identity; if you do the wrong units, however, you will learn how to analyse urban planning. Sociology is a mixed bag, but it’s certainly not as bad as Anthropology.

Sociologists compile data for a case study of College Academia

Highly recommended: anything taught by legendary Dr Laura Beth Begg - ANYTHING. Pro Tip: Seek out units with smaller classes such as Contemporary Sociological Theory (SCLG3601)

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Philosophy The University of Sydney’s Philosophy department has spawned such celebs as Plato, Aristotle and Foucault (strong exchange program). Reviews of courses were mixed and written in a style that had been drilled into many Philosophy students; leave meaning at the door and embrace syllables. For first years eager to question your existence, your strange desire will not be sated by the narrow range of subjects offered in lower years. PHIL1012 Introductory Logic with Nick Smith got a good wrap for an interesting foray into argument construction and how to live with the world’s most generic name. Teaching quality differs violently from unit to unit, with most feedback hitting the middle of the road, but if you don’t do any of your readings and expect your lecturer or tutor to demystify the wonders of ethics then you’re kidding yourself. Read stuff. Engage. You should do both of these things early on, because if you want to major in philosophy, you have to pick two of the three subjects offered in first year. If your profile on eHarmony includes a deep love of writing until your fingers bleed, adding seventy layers to reality and a warped belief that Inception is inevitable, Philosophy is a suitable major for you.

Senior unit lecturers have a habit of parenthetically mentioning the ideas of nine philosophers in the course of explaining one. Learn quickly that you aren’t expected to know all of these and don’t feel discouraged if you don’t.

First year philosophy courses will be populated strongly by students whose applications to the more sandstoneubiquitous Oxford were rejected, so classes at the beginning of the semester are crowded. Don’t worry, people soon begin to discover Manning and the lectures become a reasonable size. Lectures are recorded for some subjects, which is useful to the student who needs a qualiﬁed academic to sift through what can often be extremely dense and challenging material in the readers. Owing to the size of the course readers, these hefty door-stops will set you back more than many other units, but in a rare bout of legality, the course coordinator of PHIL1012 provides all content online.

blunder through your HSC English Extension 2 major work with a minimalist, post-structuralist, neo-Nietzsche approach to feminist historicism, Philosophy units tend to require a great deal of reading and writing prowess. Predictably, many subjects are taught in the abstract and students seem to struggle with new concepts. Fears of this are unlikely to be allayed by the often-absent tutors who are difficult to get in contact with and ‘take forever in replying to our emails, especially near exam or essay deadlines!’ Some tutors are also lampooned as ‘elitist’ or less committed, and watch out for conflicting opinions amongst tutors and lecturers with regards to assessment details and interpretations. Our advice is to contact the course coordinator, as they will be the one setting out the marking criteria and administrative side of assessments. As for conflicting academic opinions, welcome to university. Of course, if you genuinely believe that your work has been marked unfairly (beyond bitterness and an inexplicable urge to punch your marker in the head) then appeal it. Appeal the shit out of it. See page 48 – ‘How to Not Get Screwed’. In general, the range of subjects is pretty satisfying beyond first semester at which point you are at liberty to start sounding deeply profound and inventing words. Online lecture notes that are often posted at the end of each week and smart use of technology that doesn’t flood you with pop quizzes (as some other faculties have developed a proclivity to do) make philosophy a quite progressive department with more hits than misses. Reality, Ethics and Beauty as well as Philosophy of Law seem to be resounding wins for students. There was a common theme of intercourse utility in Critical Thinking. Calm down, this is not as exciting as you think. It seems this subject equips you with all of the ‘wank-your-way-through’ essay-writing skills you’ll need in many faculties, particularly Arts. To complement your transition into novella-long essays, we humbly recommend the University’s The Write Site and several seminars run during O-Week. One bold respondent remarked how ‘this course lifted my 70 average to well above an 80-85’. Righto, university legend.

On the administration side of things, it seems that course coordinators often grant extensions if you get your application in early. Although, bludgers should be advised against enrolling in philosophy. Even if you managed to PAGE 2 0

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Performance

Religion

Nobody really knows what Performance Studies is. It can be described as a strange yet thrilling amalgam of philosophy, anthropology, movement studies, theatre studies, dance, musicology and a deeply entrenched ambition to be Mr. G. It’s one of the dinkiest departments within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, but arguably one of the broadest and most intriguing; Performance Studies is also one of the easier disciplines in which to cook yourself up a major.

And on the eighth day, God stopped attending tutorials and hung out at Manning. Lucky we were here to set you up with all the info on the USyd School of Studies in Religion. So, if you want the low down on this major (or just a serious of variously witty and tragic religion puns) than here is your Bible!

The course splits pretty evenly between the theoretical and practical components. As for the aspiring Hollywood stars, you will be bitterly disappointed when Spielberg informs you that a Performance Studies major generally doesn’t qualify you for professional theatre practice. Don’t let that get you down, though, because Performance Studies does equip you with the skills to tell Geoffrey Rush that he’s doin’ it wrong. One respondent sums up the discipline succinctly: ’Studying performance is not just about watching performance or thinking about it (though you get to do a lot of that as well), it’s also about increasing your understanding of what it means to perform through the act of performance itself.’ Most tutorials involve a practical aspect that can often be quite demanding for the more introverted theatre buff. One particular Commedia dell’Arte activity gives students the opportunity to embody a masked character, which is apparently a shizload of fun, if a bit confronting. Once you bumble your way through the core PRFM2601 and PRFM2602, you only need to complete 36 credit points of the senior PRFM3600 units – win! Despite some challenging coursework, students gush over the ability of lecturers and tutors to sift through and crystallize concepts. Lecturing Oscars go to Amanda Card and Paul Dwyer, whilst Golden Globes were rained down upon tutors Chris Haye, Miranda Heckenberg and Kath Bicknell. Particularly notable is the pedigree of tutors, whose net has been cast wide over industry practice as well as academia ’It ’s not like being taught by a bunch of academics. It’s more than that!’ Be warned that this department has a penchant for group work assignments, which is about as much use in assessing your skill as throwing you under a bus. On the downside, some senior subjects require students to see certain pieces of professional theatre, which can often (and inexplicably) cost you several years of wages. There are cheaper options available on the list of shows to immerse yourself in, but I’d still rather spend that extra twenty bucks propping up Manning bar. However, the department is apparently quite understanding of students who approach them with legitimate financial difficulty – compassion not to be exploited by thrifty theatre fanatics clamouring for a STC subscription. You know who you are.

For 2012 the School has changed up their subject line-up significantly, adding a whole bunch of new subjects with wicked sounding names like ‘Sex, Desire and the Sacred’ and ‘Creativity, Art and the Sacred.’ For that reason, we can’t give you very much useful specific advice about the subjects offered, but anything taught by Associate Professor Carole Cusack seems to be a sure bet, apparently she is ‘really easy to learn from and really knows her stuff.’ Unfortunately, that isn’t a trait shared by some other members of staff, described as ‘sporadic and sometimes offensive,’ and ‘poor.’ Students complained of the 2011 offerings that they lacked a focus on non-Western religions, with a significant bias towards Christianity. However, in 2012 some subjects seem to respond to that criticism.

The units that you will study in senior years are decreed from on high and you get literally no choice in what subjects you want to study to make up a major. In order to achieve a major in Studies in Religion, you must first complete the two junior units RLST1001 ‘Paths to Enlightenment’ and RLST 1002 ‘The History of God’ THEN you have to complete six senior units THEN St Peter will sign off on your snazzy Major. The units that you will study in senior years are decreed from on high and you get literally no choice in what subjects you want to study to make up a major (unless you are the Chosen One, and are able to complete an honours prerequisite). That there is little (read: no) scope for choice within senior units in this discipline was a common criticism from students. So, whether by divine intervention, the result of selling your soul or good old Catholic guilt, Studies of Religion isn’t the worst place to be. Basically, some pretty interesting content (with fire and brimstone and shit), varied teaching staff, and relatively relaxed assessment schedule, this is a major that is good for the soul.

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€conomics Few departments are as hated by its own students as economics. If you feel you’re at university to do more than rote-learn what sometimes amounts to free-market doctrine and a couple of formulas to make pretty graphs, then you might be better oﬀ grazing academic pastures a long way away from the School of Economics. Unfortunately critical questioning is a lot less marketable a commodity than greed and conformism. Let’s be clear, understanding the way the economy works in the real world is fascinating, but if that’s why you’re studying economics then there will be little to satiate you at Sydney Uni. The Economics Department has an obsessive focus on economic growth, utility maximization and factor and product markets, and you will have almost no scope to critically engage with the assumptions which underlie this bizarre orthodoxy. As one student put it, lecturers often have a narrow-minded tendency to view their discipline as just the “social application of mathematics.” Even though its method of inquiry is quite accurately lambasted as overly abstract and of little (no) practical value, it would be unfair to characterize the discipline as a whole as narrow-minded right-wing dogma - a lot of good research does get done, and lecturers at Sydney are at the top of their ﬁeld. Unfortunately, very little of it ever actually reaches the classroom. You’ll be subject to a fair bit of formal statistical training, but on the whole you’ll very rarely engage in empirical study of economics as an undergraduate at Sydney University.

Check everything: enrolment, assessment, marks – check it all and check it often. At a junior level, you’ll be required to complete two compulsory core units (Introductory Micro and Macro Economics) in addition to two junior stats courses. While course content was universally considered conceptually shallow, even “mindfuckingly boring as fuck”, by our respondents, ECON1001 and ECON1002 have a notoriously high rate of failure. This is in part due to many students disengaging from what’s deﬁnitely a pretty terrible learning environment, but the blame also goes to exams which are so maths-heavy that some students allege that they are “designed to make you fail.” Take into account crowded lectures and tutes (plus some tutors who just don’t give a fuck about your education) and you’re in for a pretty miserable ﬁrst year at uni. Once you get further through your degree, you’ll need to decide whether you want to take honours in economics (and start taking subjects in the pre-honours stream) or just stick with normal-level units. Our respondents warn, don’t major in econ if you’re not great at maths. You’ll struggle. The PAGE 22

further you get through your degree the more adept you’ll need to be - a lot of students recommended taking some units in the maths department, especially if you go on to the prehonours stream when the economic theory takes a backseat to “maths, maths and more fucking maths.” One of the honours pre-requisite subjects, Mathematical Economics A (ECOS2903), was described as “hands down, the worst econ subject available at Sydney. And that’s saying quite a bit.” It covers the basics of linear algebra and optimization, but its exams are so difficult and its teaching so inadequate that most Economics students drop honours because of this unit. Out of the ‘normal-level’ units available, Industrial Organisation (ECOS3005) taken by Nic de Roos is fairly rigorous and rewarding, and won’t be too difficult if you’re on top of third-year micro and game theory. There was universal praise to lecturers David Kim, Danielle Merrett, Oleksii Birulin and the Senguptas, so try and do their units if you can. Textbooks are essential for almost every course, and you will sometimes rack up course costs in the realm of $500. If you ever need discount books, check out the SRC’s second hand bookshop, top-floor of the Wentworth building. Despite Economics moving to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 2010, you’ll be stuck at Sydney Business School for many of the core units in your major. Be warned, this is a faculty notorious for its problematic (read: dysfunctional) administration. Many academics show nothing but contempt for assessment and appeals policy, and some administrators are simply incompetent. Check everything: enrolment, assessment, marks – check it all and check it often. If you want to learn about how the economy works in the real world, take political economy as your second major – it’ll put the theory in context and give you a far better understanding of the assumptions which underlie the orthodoxy. If your interest is in public policy, then combining a major in economics with political economy will make you highly sought after by employers.

Economics offers a popular exchange program to Greece.*

*Requires a fail average.

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Political Economy The Department of Political Economy studies the economy without the narrow formalism characteristic of most Economics departments. It is one of Sydney University’s few truly world-leading research and teaching disciplines, with only a small number of other universities around the world enjoying such a concentration of respected non-orthodox economists. First thing to know: Political Economy is not politics, it’s economics (it’s the antiquated name for economics, used by Adam Smith and co.). What characterises Political Economy is its rejection of the brand of economics taught by the School of Economics. While Economics is certainly a social science, it is set apart from the mainstream of the social sciences by a fundamentalist commitment to rationalistic formalism and methodological individualism. It has been widely criticised for allowing its obsession with elegant modeling to distract it from the economic phenomena of the real world. The range of debate within economic theory is also suﬀocatingly narrow, with almost total exclusion of non-neoclassical strands of economic thought from the Economics Department. While Political Economy lacks the public prestige of the so-called Queen of the Social Sciences, it enjoys far more credibility among professional economists. This is reﬂected by the fact that PhD candidates in Political Economy have for some time now greatly exceeded those taking Economics.

ECOP3620, 2911, 3911 and 3912 don’t have exams. Get on it. In ﬁrst year, you’ll begin with an introduction to a broad tradition that runs from Adam Smith through Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman and beyond. Economics as a Social Science (ECOP1001) is one of the highest-rated units in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and is beloved by over 30-years of students. Unfortunately 2012 will be the ﬁrst time since Political Economy’s inception that ECOP1001 has not been taught by Comrade-Professor Frank “hot bitch” Stilwell, but rest assured it will be in the safe hands of Lynne Chester. Come second semester you’ll face a choice between International Economy and Finance (ECOP1003), which studies the economic implications of globalization, and Economy and Society (ECOP1004), which introduces you to economic sociology. Almost universally, respondents recommended taking ECOP1003. In the compulsory second-year courses those majoring in the subject begin to meet sophisticated technical economic models and are expected to engage at a high level with debates around economic policy. All ECOP units combine theory with

issues-based analysis, but senior units tend to be anchored one way or the other. To complete a major in the subject you will be required to take two compulsory theory-based units of study, Economics of Modern Capitalism (ECOP2011) and Economic Policy in a Global Context (ECOP2612) and at least four additional senior units (either theory or issue-based). ECOP2011 is a critical study of modern economic perspectives (Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Keynes, Sraffa, Samuelson), and is highly difficult but rewarding. Susan Schroeder’s ECOP2612 continues with late twentieth century developments in economic thought, including Monetarism, Rational Choice Theory, New Classical economics, New Keynesian economics, and modern heterodox theory. Both are said to be “megashit for about eight weeks until it all finally clicks” and you realise just how much you’ve learnt. For your issues-based electives, Finance: Volatility and Regulation (ECOP3019) with Dick Bryan is said to achieve the impossible by making the study of finance genuinely engaging. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, he methodically dismantles neoclassical theorising of financial markets and critically engages with alternative policy programmes in what was said to be one of the most up-to-date and relevant courses you can take at University. The Political Economy of Development (ECOP3014), taught by Elizabeth Hill, is said to be “one of the truly great courses offered by the political economy department.” aking a good blend of economic theory and case studies from the developing world, it was recommended by more than half of our respondents. Political economy is also one of those rare Arts subjects that can get you a job on graduation. If you want a background in public policy, don’t take Government – combine a major in economics with honours in political economy and you’ll be on a one-way train to Canberra. The Department is also noted for its active student body, with the Political Economy Society (ECOPSOC) holding weekly drinks outside Hermann’s at 5. It’s said to be just as good as studying ECOP, but with beer!

ECOP students are the 99%. #occupythequad

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Dentistry It boggles the mind that people enrol in dentistry consensually. As to why anyone would want to plunge deep into the mysteries of all things mouth and spend their working life being bombarded by putrid breath, it is unclear. But students of dentistry clearly get a kick out of their intense studies and as long as Coke continues to be the preferred beverage of our generations, employment won’t be elusive. However, if you’re just in it for the glamour, then you might want to rethink. Dentistry is one of the most demanding courses on offer, with a dangerous amount of contact hours and sheer amount of skills and information to learn. For the first two years, students are required to attend the lectures of not only Dentistry, but Medicine as well. Needless to say, this demands a maniacal amount of commitment and virtually excludes the possibility of holding down a part time job without stressing yourself out to the point of coathangering your boss or yourself. This is a particular impediment to studying, because in a spectacular display of illegality, the University will force you to buy an astonishing amount of expensive and necessary equipment. Students were abundantly justified when complaining about the purchase of tooth models, prosthetics lab equipment, dissection tools, articulators, loupes, endodontic material, a deposit for the use of Westmead Hospital and plastic teeth. Estimates put ancillary course costs at staggering $3000 per year. Despite being a particularly well-paid profession, the university clearly makes no distinction between studying and practicing dentistry. Make absolutely sure that you are getting as much assistance from the government, scholarships, the university and kind strangers as possible. Keep in mind the SRC can provide you with emergency loans if you find yourself stuck. NB being in dire need of a cider does not qualify as an emergency. (For this purpose, anyway).

Clinical placements were the highlight for our Counter Course respondents, who commented that no amount of lectures can teach you the kind of skills that clinical experience provides you with the opportunity to not only learn, but also practice. The faculty has once again inexplicably defied logic and split the time of individual students between Westmead and Sydney Dental Hospital instead of splitting the cohort between the two locations. In any case, look forward to the clinical element to your degree; it is far more interesting than spending twenty seven hours of your day sitting in a lecture theatre staring at malformed molars. Similarly, practical labs were a hit with students, said to ‘enhance the learning in theory’. It was particularly helpful that tutors were well reviewed, making labs both fun and informative. Despite being a little understaffed, the subsequent higher loadings on some staff did not affect the student experience of quality lecturing and tutoring. Tooth Conservation (surprisingly not a brushing crash-course) was again recommended due to its excellent lecturers, Dr. Dracopoulos and Prof. Bryant. Students warn of uniquely confusing assessment methods. Apparently there are arbitrary differences between markers and assessments such as those for communications are not reflective, sensitive, valid or objective. Exams can often be weighted absurdly heavily, lumping you with a 70 or 80% final, whilst assessments often pile up towards the end of semester. On top of this, feedback was reportedly tardy in its delivery and was distinctly unhelpful when it finally was received. Our only advice beyond burning it would be to approach your tutor to ask for a more constructive critique. Although there have historically been complaints about staff respect for appeals procedures, special consideration and confidentiality, the Counter Course editors received no feedback of that variety this year. However, respondents were few and far between, so this may not be entirely reflective. It would be a miracle for a department to institute change so rapidly, so if you have any concerns throughout the year, contact the SRC. We have professional caseworkers and staff that can address the issues through the proper channels. As long as your complaint isn’t toothless, we can help. …sorry.

’Be organised and learn to take the good with the bad!’ Although expensive, Dentistry equipment is also handy for plumbing, fetishes, and plumbing fetishes. PAGE 24

’Make sure you chose good year reps.’

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Accounting

Accounting is one of those subjects that some unlucky students are forced to do as a requirement of their degrees. If you take it because you think it’ll make you “more employable,” then you’re a sad, sad case. There are a lot less mind-numbing ways to hit it rich. First year accounting is generally recognized as being “absolutely boring to death.”In ﬁrst semester, you will have to complete ACCT1001 – a basic outline of accounting theory and practice that students said was “bearable, but makes you want to hit your head against a wall at certain points.” ACCT1002 gives a good run-down of the practical elements of discipline, but the workload is apparently incredibly intensive at points. At senior level, International Corporate Governance (ACCT3031) is a fairly interesting and useful unit. It gives a practical idea of what actually happens in the corporate world, unlike other accounting units which merely involve regurgitating a list of entries, accounting standards or ﬁnancial statements. You don’t even have to buy a textbook for this course, which means you get to save a lot of money.

Students say: accounting is literally the most boring subject there is. Unsurprisingly, some of the teaching staff are not noted for their enthusiasm. Feedback from lecturers, across the board, is often delayed or absent. This is obviously not acceptable, and if you feel you haven’t been given sufficient feedback remember that you have the right to demand it from your tutor. Lecturers and tutors apparently also often ignore student emails, so if you feel you’re being snubbed come to the SRC and one of our caseworkers can set your teacher on track. Students also warn that “group assessment tasks can be a real pain, as there are far too many free riders within the Faculty.” If a group member isn’t pulling their weight, remember that you have the right to report it to your tutor. Look forward to buying upwards of $300 in textbooks every semester. All set texts are meant to be in the library, but there are usually only one or two copies for a cohort that fills two lecture halls. Not sure if the Faculty expects 20 students to crowd around a single desk in Fisher during exam time, but that’s obviously not a practical alternative to buying the books. If you need discount texts check out the SRC bookshop (top floor, Wentworth) or buy them second-hand – you won’t regret it. So, while we envy the job you’ll have on graduation, the workload and the course costs are not for the faint of heart.

Finance

We’re not going to lie, this is a struggle to flesh out. Finance students have a perennial problem of not responding in great numbers to the Counter Course survey so we don’t have much material to work with. But given the 4 responses we did get, it looks like Finance is quite a challenging area of study with very mixed reviews. Feel rest-assured that when you graduate you’ll be a member of the world’s most hated profession! Half (2) of our respondents reported a problem with exam weighting. A recurring issue with finance seems to be that often the final exam counts for something like 80% of your final mark. This means that there’s a particular tendency for finance students to rote-learn content rather than internalise it, which means for particularly higher-order concepts finance students don’t have time to reach the in-depth level of understanding that are valued at university. We didn’t get any feedback on particular subjects, but last year’s survey revealed that FINC2012 was a well-liked subject which was apparently quite rigorous in its assessments but also had interesting subject matter. Derivative Securities was a very maths-heavy course, and was criticised for not giving students a deep enough background in maths to do well in the course. Corporate Finance II was a bit dodgy given the high weighting for the final exam, and as a result led to a few really interesting concepts being brushed over in lectures and study. A quarter (1) of our respondents also reported that finance has a relatively inflexible degree structure, which puts students under an inordinate amount of pressure to pass their subjects. Seriously, make sure you don’t fail, otherwise you’ll have no option but to rack up a huge debt from Summer School. And finance students know all about the perils of debt. In the end, if you want to make a lot of money then you could do worse than finance. While we can’t really give you all that much advice on what it’s like, we do know that finance graduates from Sydney University are considered highly employable and, given that you’re doing Commerce, you’re probably a heartless careerist anyway so that much is good.

Disagree? Well, that’s awkward. You’ve already destroyed the world economy... Don’t you have time to ﬁll in a survey?

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Marketing The Marketing department is so damned good at teaching students how to deviously sell the unsellable it’s almost as if Michael Spence designed all of the units himself. The time that is not devoted to watching the Gruen Transfer and laughing at Coles advertisements is generally spent learning from highly rated lecturers about how to exploit consumers and sell ideas. Like all good things, you have to wait it out for legitimately interesting marketing subjects. But first, be prepared for one of the less thrilling series of lectures you’re likely to experience at university. MKTG1001 Marketing Principles is taken by Jeaney Yip, who receives some glowing praise for injecting some life into the dull content. In an unexpected and uncharacteristic display of student laziness, some were critical of the workload in the introductory subjects, but we understand it can be difficult to get fired up over why people purchase certain types of broccoli. If you are less enthused by the theoretical components of the course, the degree provides two remedies to this. First, lecturers often introduce engaging everyday examples of theory in practice; a rare demonstration of how your university degree can actually translate into a career. The second is a range of pretty sweet assessment modes that will have you designing marketing campaigns for products. Check out MKTG3121 Marketing Advertising Creative Principles if you’re sold. Other escapes from the vacuum of theory include MKTG3188 Marketing Strategy and Planning. Studying in the Marketing department will have you frequently reaching for your wallet. Course materials (without which you will have little success) can often set you back a pretty penny, and don’t look to Fisher library to save you; apparently the collection of marketing resources is atrocious. Additionally, some students seized the opportunity the Counter Course survey provided to warn others not to argue with tutors and lecturers. Despite violent variations in opinions with regard to assessments, it’s not only easier but also more fruitful to concede to the one who will be marking your work. The department insists on repeatedly dumping group assignments on unsuspecting students. Most respondents felt seriously gypped by this mode of assessment, and said that the demographic composition of the Business School made effective and fair collaboration particularly challenging. Group reports and presentations are polarizing experiences that will generally result in one person copping all of the work in an attempt to humour the other members who are PAGE 26

either hungover or chronically lazy. Most of the time, you’ll just have to suck it up and march onward, but if you are being drowned by laziness or incompetence in such a way that may affect your chances of being fairly assessed, have a chat to your tutor or course coordinator. But if your group is plotting anything less than your ritual disembowelment, then you might just have to take this aspect of marketing as a fact of your studies and, perhaps more importantly, a fact of your profession.

Students learn how to get us excited at the prospect of purchasing a shit blanket If you’re after some good lecturing and interesting content, give a gander to MKTG5001 or MKTG6003 as they get a pretty good rap. Many marketing students recommend their subjects to anyone who wants to work in business, probably because all businesspeople are inherently unethical; the marketing department seems to be the perfect cradle for this. If you’re not sure that marketing is to your tastes, go along to a few lectures before the final add/drop date to get a feel for the unit. Public Relations Management features some great case studies which frequently feature as the saving graces of many subjects, but you’ll have to wade through a semester of terrible lecturers who are veritably Amish in their approach to technology. Microphones are apparently instruments of evil. For those marketing eager beavers who are abundant in career direction, quit your job at Kmart and start selling yourself to marketing firms. Sydney Uni enjoys a very comfortable relationship with many companies, and is pretty well regarded on the marketing front. If you need a nudge in the right direction, check out the Sydney Marketing Society. Marketing - I’m lovin’ it.

SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

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Education Learning how to teach from people who teach teaching is one of the more complex ways to describe the Education degree. Other descriptions include ‘excellent’, ‘fun’ and ‘rewarding’. To the standard student, it boggles the mind why one, once escaped from school, would want to return that place in which most of your nightmares came true. But hopefully not the one where you turned up naked. Responses from Education students were polarized, perhaps reﬂecting how subject choices can make or break both enjoyment and usefulness of your degree. Unsurprisingly, the best lecturers and tutors practiced what they preached and gave students an opportunity to see theories in practice ﬁrst hand. Most respondents commented that being taught in the way that students aspire to teach was the most valuable and rewarding experience of the course. This is just as well, because units often lack clarity and direction, particularly in the earlier stages of compulsory units. Some students found that theoretical components were vaguely assessed in such a way that marks were arbitrarily added or subtracted depending on how a tutor might interpret the most general criteria.

Planning your degree is vital. In the words of Mufasa, ‘be prepared!’

Education also copped ﬂack for group work modes of assessment that frequently land the more competent students with either the burden of doing all the work or being marked unfairly due to the gronk presentation given by a group member. As much as we all endorse and enjoy innovative and collective procrastination, respondents advised to ‘make friends with smart people. Early.’ Look out for the unwelcome torrent of assessments (particularly in EDUF2007) that typically comprise most Education subjects and be sure to plan your semester out with a big ol’ calendar. In the words of the great Mufasa, ‘be prepared!’ Granted, this can be quite diﬃcult when administrative oversights leave students without a course outline until week two or three, but do your best. Lecturer for EDUF 1018, Paul Ginn, proves to be a man of the people, recommending the incredibly useful Night Before Essay Planner. Realistic. Planning across your degree is also important in order to avoid graduating with a major in Manning burgers or, god forbid, no accumulated tangible skills at all.

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Some gems of lecturers such as Mingkang Kim reportedly provide handy and comprehensive study guides, lecture notes and summaries online to help you study and encourage you to substitute class for cider. Further shout-outs are due to David Evans, Kate Smyth and especially Lina Markauskaite, who is described as ‘an amazing educator’ and ‘a teacher’s teacher’. Whilst the basics in earlier years can leave you bored senseless and contemplating ways to grievously harm yourself, senior units and cross-listed Arts subjects will heal your wounds. If you’re after atrocious teaching and totally irrelevant content, take a look a Curriculum Evaluation; but if sweet assessment modes, fantastic lecturing and useful skills might be more to your taste, then literacy, maths, science and human development units get a great rap from students.

Guest lecturers are featured in EDUF0294 - How to Dress Like a Teacher

For those eager to get out of the classroom and into a classroom, pracs are generally a great experience. Despite being unpaid, often in far-ﬂung corners of the earth and leaving no possibility of part-time employment for their duration, pracs provide an invaluable opportunity to practice your skills. If you get stuck at a school so bad it resembles a mental institution, hard luck. The only basis on which you can amend your prac location is if travel exceeds four hours per day. And you can’t fake it by walking at snail’s pace to the turd of a school around the corner from your house. Make sure you take full advantage of the Curriculum Library, which is described by several respondents as a ‘life saver’. Other pro-tips include getting to know people in your course at the Peer Program in ﬁrst semester, as Education students often work collaboratively on assessments and tackle any challenges that Manning may present as a team. Ironically similar to school, the Education faculty requires that you attend 90% of tutorials, making it even more crucial to plan your semester ahead of time. Overall, the Education faculty tends to be populated with incredibly passionate lecturers, tutors and students; you’ll learn to love it. And if you don’t, then you’ll at least learn how to teach others how to love it. SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Social Work Look, we’ll be honest – studying social work is going to be a particularly grueling 4 years of your life. If you want to be a social worker then you’ll find all the coursework about as useful as trying to perform surgery without learning to use a scalpel. That’s a shame, because Social Work academics are by all accounts friendly, approachable and incredibly sympathetic to your plight. Most tutes have 15 or fewer students, which means that you garner a fuck-tonne of individual attention. Snaps to the Department for being generally without racism or other prejudice; there are mandatory Koori Studies units, and the staff are hyper-tuned to the Australian context. Lecturers who received praise include Jude Irwin, whose course ‘Interpersonal Violence’ was a stand-out for its “relevance,” as well as Barbara Fawcett and Cherie Toivoen who were excellent tutors. Students also said that set texts were often inessential to passing the course. Either all the course content is contained in the lecture material, or the lecturer draws heavily from the reader. The advice was to “wait it out” before you’re sure you really want to “commit” to buying the textbook. Also try checking out the library copy, although during exams it might get a little difficult to secure. The practical side of the course is a bit dysfunctional, not to fault the academics in the Social Work dept. You have absolutely no field experience until third and fourth year, which is a huge commitment of time to a degree which you haven’t had a chance to test drive and figure out if it’s really for you. What makes it even more difficult to deal with is that you have to do your placement full-time without any pay. That’s 9-5 four days a week (in third year) or five a week in fourth year. Good luck eating. Last year, a wise fourth year said to “make sure you are eligible for full Austudy/Youth Allowance BEFORE you start the course. It is impossible to complete two 15-16 week placements without some form of income support.” This still rings true. Many students feel that the Social Work degree is boring and pointless, because the majority of the coursework has no practical application. Some students said they thought that the degree “should be more specific to the skills that social workers need from the onset i.e a whole semester on skills like counseling and group work, with more direct/professional practice skills taught from the start.”

There’s also a certain cruelty in being forced to pay for four years of a degree when all that really counts towards your job prospects is some unpaid work experience on your placement. Still, respondents could not emphasise enough how valuable placement is. Although Professional Practice (SCWK3008) is one of the few informative and practical courses provided by the department (and certainly provides some solid theory behind the practice), nothing beats going out into the community and getting some hands-on experience. It’s critically important that you get a placement that suits your skill set and challenges you. FIGHT if you have to – when you graduate it’s essentially all your employer will know about you, and will pretty much determine the path of your career. Staff are generally pretty receptive to requests to change location, and the SRC can help you if you need to lodge an appeal. While it’s certainly a very good degree, there was a general feeling that course could benefit from being more flexible. Students made the point that they were taught about social inclusion, but mature aged students and people who work still struggle to meet the course structure. Most other Bachelors of Social Work at other universities are far more flexible, and quite a few older students drop out or transfer. Social work tends to be a particularly tight-knit community, and if you’re passionate about it then there’s no better area of study. Just make sure you plan everything - have your major sorted out early, know what you’ll be doing in third and fourth year and save up for your placement.

Employment prospects for social workers (and psychologists) are much higher in Canberra

Pro-tip: Plan your major early. Changing mid-course is deeply undesirable Investigate any beneﬁts you may be eligible for - full-time unpaid placement sucks S T U D EN T S R EPR E S EN TAT I V E CO U N C I L , U N I V ER S I T Y O F S Y D N E Y

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AMME

Civil

Students in AMME mourned the loss of NASA’s beloved moon operations this year. Perhaps it was due to this grief that the Counter Course survey received about two thousand words from respondents in response to the question ‘what didn’t you like about the subject area?’ with the most common words being ‘staff’ and ‘terrible’, mainly seen together with various expletives interspersed. Similar to last year, most lecturers and tutors were reported to: be obscenely stubborn and unhelpful, view teaching as a chore and organize courses like sweatshops. Some reviews were more positive (or polite, perhaps) and termed the content interesting and useful. AERO1400 gets a great rap for practical assignments based on multimedia presentations that detailed intriguing developments in an evolving industry, and AMME3500 is loved (mainly) for Stefan ‘dreamy accent’ Williams. MECH1400 and 1560 included very practical components, whilst ENGG1901 had great online notes that prompted one student to attend zero lectures. Not a pro-tip. Classes were overcrowded in the junior years, but seniors raved about the rapport built in smaller classes in third and fourth year. Labs were the redeeming feature of many students’ experience, mainly because lecture delivery and content were either horrific or horrifically crammed with information. This overload encouraged students to rote learn content, which they soon forgot after cramming for an absurdly weighted exam that asked questions about content not covered in the lectures. Good work, Engo. Doug Auld apparently runs engineering for the displeasure of students and seems to ‘get a kick out of failing students’. Ambiguous assessment criteria are a constant source of confusion for students, with infuriating variation between markers and an overbearing sense of injustice. Content of tiny quizzes is based solely on the whims of the lecturer. If mammoth workloads that drive you to mass criminality aren’t for you, then enrol elsewhere. One respondent quotes a lecturer - ‘If I find out you’re getting sleep, I’ll make it harder’. Even as a joke, this is incredibly sadistic and probably warrants therapy of some sort. MECH3661 was described as a ‘joke of a subject’ that everyone bar the lecturer was in on. Similarly, AERO1400 and 1560 are run by ‘overlord’ K.C. Wong and are suspiciously similar to pure maths units.

Some AMME assignments can be costly to complete

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Civil engineering focuses on the complex art of how to build stuff that won’t fall down. Unsurprisingly, this takes a reasonable amount of work and, like the buildings in which you will live for the duration of your degree, often ain’t pretty. This discipline has 4 different streams and as of this year also includes the new B Project Engineering and Management degree. It is the biggest of all the engineering schools and civil engineering received the least negative feedback of all. Respondents were generally enthused about the course and had fantastic things to say about teaching staff. Be prepared for a degree that doesn’t feature an awful lot of hands-on work and will bombard you with basics, basics, basics.

Loved: CIVL2611 Introductory Fluid Mechanics Less loved: ENORMOUS classes The main complaints were related to tutorial sizes, they were described as “HORRENDOUSLY OVERCROWDED.” This seems to be a recurring issue for the engineering faculty (at least in the junior years) and this is made more frustrating by many of the teaching staff’s challenging accents. And, consistent with the other engineering disciplines, don’t expect to have lecture content available online. Nonetheless, lecturers such as Tim Wilkinson, Richard Weber, Peter Xie, Gwénaëlle Proust, and Luming Shen received particular praise for their knowledge and dedication. Units to look out for in civil engineering include CIVL2611, “Introductory Fluid Mechanics,” which is reportedly very intense and time consuming. First years whinged endlessly about ENGG1802, “Engineering Mechanics,” the unit with the “ridiculously hard and ambiguous” take-home assignment whose due date coincided with basically everything else at the end of the semester. If you harbour a nasty grudge against somebody in your tutorial, the faculty kindly allows you to express this through peer assessment. Yep, students determine each other’s participation marks at the end of semester. It’s okay, nobody else understands why this is a thing either. Perhaps because of its versatility as a discipline or the appeal of potentially crushing an architect’s visions and dreams, civil engineering at the University of Sydney still attracts the most students and is somewhat seen as the default engineering. So as civil engineering students stress and strain over their workload, at least they are more likely to meet someone suffering from the same pains, and can comfort in knowing that none of their compatriots have suggested to “look into a different university.” SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Chemical Undertaking a degree in Chemical Engineering will equip you with the skills to design and brew polyjuice potion. Most of this will be drunk at Hermanns after – or during – class. Interestingly, chemical engineering (technically it’s “Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering”) students complained very little about what intuitively would appear a huge workload. But this discipline is, by its nature, quite different from the other engineering disciplines; the only common subject with other engineers (apart from the mind numbing first year maths) is Computing. Many units will be conducted by staff from the Chemistry department, who are generally praised as some kind of cult gods. Lecturers and tutors were highly rated, such as Vincent Gomes, Richard Payne, and Geoff Barton. CHNG 3805 and CHNG 3807 were described as ‘incredibly interesting’, the content of which was complemented by fascinating projects. In a classic display of Engo despondence, CHNG1103 was hailed by students as ‘good enough’. It is common knowledge that the engineering faculty operates in a time vacuum, so beware of lecturers from the school of chemistry spending way too much time writing on the blackboard where the content is lost to all except to those sitting at the front of the lecture theatre. Unfortunately, tutors and lecturers alike were accused of being tardy, unapproachable and downright unhelpful at times. If you were looking to be guided gently through your course, look elsewhere. The labs for chemical engineering have been described as “a bit boring” and poorly run. And this is because most labs don’t have a competent instructor, who apparently cannot be a Masters of Professional Engineering student. But despite this shortcoming, feedback on the quality of the learning experience was positive. However, assessments were a recurring complaint from respondents to the Counter Course survey. Watch out for quizzes being dumped on you in week twelve and thirteen. Assessment criteria are often opaque and feedback is minimal to nonexistent. Be warned. All in all, chemical engineering is great because it is an engineering degree but without all the mind-numbing physics students in the other disciplines have to suffer through. To put it in another way, if you’re good at chemistry but don’t want to seem indecisive and graduate with a science degree, then chemical engineering is for you.

Electrical engineering even beats AMME with respect to its gender ratio. Take note, lady and gentlemen.

Electrical

Electrical engineering involves shocking amounts of maths and physics, creating what one respondent sadistically described as “a vicious cycle of constant work and no breathing space.” People flock to this popular discipline to hone their skills at designing circuits, playing around with nodes (not a euphemism) and learning how to electrocute others who annoy them (read: law students.) Overall, students seemed pretty satisfied with the actual content of the degree, but often found administration and underfunding to be sources of perpetual confusion and headaches. Course material is very conceptual, so the best advice for electrical engineering students is to stay on top of things (or one lecture ahead if possible) because the units are structured hierarchically and it is very hard to catch up if you didn’t understand the fundamentals. Ingratiate yourself with some more senior students and scab some hand-me-down notes. Respondents stressed the importance of forward planning as there are subjects in fifth year with non-core pre-requisites. ELEC2104, “Electronic Devices and Circuits” is highly recommended by students for this reason. ELEC5205 received the opposite recommendation, infamous for it’s smattering of tiny assessments that aren’t so much challenging as irritating. Lecturers and tutors are not particularly noted for their helpfulness although the external lecturers for ELEC5205, “High Voltage Engineering” got some lovin’, even if the lecture is generally scheduled for 5-7pm, followed by a tute until 9pm for some poor souls. It is very important to make the right friends who are smart and willing to “learn collectively” otherwise you will risk having to learn everything yourself the night before your exam. Dire. The apparent incompetence, inexplicable absence and unfriendliness of tutors is a more difficult problem to remedy. Considering that pracs were cited as the most important component of the degree, it is worrying that students reported stunningly bad organization with regard to timetabling and equipment. That said, electrical engineering seem to have the least issues with class over-crowding, and the electrical engineering common room has a pool table to aid you in developing more innovative methods of procrastination. More seriously, the University of Sydney has earned a sparkling reputation for its electrical engineering department and students from other disciplines thought electrical engineering was most useful and relevant in today’s industry. Studying electrical engo will set you back a pretty penny, though. It is unclear whether textbooks are really necessary or not, but for those playing it safe, they are generally very expensive. Make sure to check out the SRC bookshop on top level of Wentworth; you will save a great deal of money that can be funneled straight back into ciders at Hermanns.

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Health Sciences If you’re studying Health Sciences, then unfortunately you’ll probably never see sandstone during your time at uni. You’ll be next door to Rookwood Cemetery, third largest in the Southern Hemisphere. If you ever run out of cadavers during an anatomy prac, then you’ll know where to go. Cumberland is a lovely campus, and every undergraduate student there is a member of the SRC. You should know that every Tuesday the SRC has caseworkers come out to the Cumbo. They offer you the same services provided by the SRC on main campus, and they’re definitely worth going to if you need something sorted out. The Cumberland Student Guild, which brands itself ‘Campus Rewards,’ is also there to provide you with a student experience, but it tends to be a bit more limited than it’s main campus equivalent, the University of Sydney Union. Generally, workloads are thought to be fairly intensive. You usually have pretty heavy contact hours, many of which will be spent inside a lab. Study usually gets pretty life consuming during the final weeks of Semester – be prepared to spend days on end in your room studying for a final exam weighted something like 80%. Regarding study, due to the way that many of the subjects are set out, a little bit of consistent work every week will go a long way in helping you with your exams. Cramming for some subjects may scrape you a pass, but for a lot of the really intensive Health Science units confining all your study to STUVAC just won’t work. For some subjects (e.g. FMA and B), you should try come prepared for labs.

Some labs aren’t ’compulsory’, but then neither is passing. GO TO THEM. Placement time is a huge issue for students as the demanding hours mean that it can be nearly impossible to maintain casual or part time work. You will be expected to work 8 hours, 5 days a week so be prepared for temporary financial hardship. Make sure you save up, and if you need help the SRC can offer emergency loans or advice from the caseworkers. You should also be aware of the hidden course costs you’ll rack up studying health sciences. It’s a requirement for most subjects that you buy expensive textbooks, especially regarding anatomy or physiology. Most students in the survey said that the readers were essential, and that while the textbooks may be as well, remember that there are copies in the library if you cannot afford them. Don’t forget to look at the second hand book exchange if you’re stressed. PAGE 32

Students were harsh in their evaluation of course equipment and utilities. A lot of it is out dated or broken - in some cases there are only one in four stethoscopes working per lab. One of the SRC’s priorities this year is improving services out at Cumbo, so if you feel you need to make a complaint the SRC can help you out. Depending on your major, your course structure will likely be fairly rigid. You will generally have a set of junior units, plus a bunch of senior prerequisite subjects that you’ll have to complete before going on to other subjects. If you want to make sure you do the subjects you want in later years, look ahead. You don’t want to end up stuffing up your year because you missed a pre-requisite. However, many health science courses do offer flexibility, and it is possible to move your subjects around to suit whatever timetable you like. Just be careful. Remember, even though some labs aren’t compulsory, it’s also not compulsory to pass the course. Every lab is essential, and so are lectures (most aren’t recorded). In saying this, if you have a bad lab instructor, swap labs. I know you’re not supposed to, and it’s probably a bit underhand to tell you this, but honestly the instructor you have makes all the difference. It’s the same with tutors and lecturers. If one isn’t working for you, look around and see what other options there are. This means that when you’re choosing subjects it’s a good idea to take the lecturer into account as that makes a huge difference to whether or not you enjoy your subject. There are an army of beloved Health Science lecturers, including Reine Cordier, Jo Lewis, Judy Ranka, Helen Ritchie, Dr P. Weerakoon, Elise Baker (received much praise), Chin Moi Chow, Andrew Campbell, Melanie Nguyen, Natalie Munro, Kate O’Loughlin, Darren Reed and Nathan Johnston. Cumberland is a great campus, most students there love it. So get involved, go on the lab coat pub crawl even if you know noone because honestly, it’s a really inclusive community. We hope you have a fantastic year… and remember, just because Cumberland is far away from the sandstone campus, this does not mean that the SRC is not there to help you.

Some junior subjects will teach you how to break an injured person’s ribcage

SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Law LAW

TRUTH BOMB: If you plan on studying law and enjoy small, interactive and practical classes, enrol at UNSW. Still, if you’re a careerist Arts student, from Grammar or just fond of pretty buildings then Sydney is a very good choice. Unlike the ‘practical’ degrees oﬀered by UNSW and UTS, Sydney places a particular emphasis on jurisprudence, and rigorously prepares its students to navigate unresolved controversies in the law (sometimes at the expense of basic, settled areas directly relevant to legal practice). Don’t stress if you think taking a slightly practical philosophy degree makes you less employable than the hack solicitors at lesser universities – you’ll be more than qualiﬁed to enjoy the mechanical routines of corporate slavery on graduation. Get involved with SULS. It’s the only society on campus allowed to restrict its membership (just students enrolled in Sydney Law School), so it will give you plenty of opportunity to spend every spare minute of your free time basking in the company of other Law students. Get involved in Law Revue. Do it. The parties are sites of Bacchanalian revelry. Icesculptures are a thing. You’ll also have plenty of opportunities to hang with your new-found buddies in your lawbrary. And your law cafe. The prices there are pretty fucking reasonable if you’re used to paying $20 for a sandwich in Mosman.

Congratulations on getting into Australia’s best Law School. That means you must have got a reaaaaaallly high ATAR. Pro-tip: never mention that again. The great strength of the Law School is the quality of its teaching staﬀ. Often the cream of their profession, few lecturers received overt criticism from respondents. Students gave overwhelming praise to Penny Crossley, who teaches Torts and Contracts II, and were just as enthused by Peter Gerangelos, David Rolph, Ross Anderson and Patricia Loughlan. Public Law (LAWS1021), however, was considered exceptionally dull, with inordinately lengthy waiting periods for feedback and mediocre delivery. Bloated class sizes make it a lot more diﬃcult to engage with the course. The Law School has for quite some time now pioneered the practice of cramming 40-80 people in a tutorial and calling it a ‘seminar.’ Seminars combine the worst features of lectures and tutorials and include the best of neither. There’s a constant theme: they “allow for far too little participation (usually involving the inevitable one or two opinionated people in the class) and little chance to really engage with the material and practice problem questions.” You fail, Law School.

First years generally agreed that Foundations of Law ‘Foundies’ (LAWS1006) and Torts (LAWS1012) were “two very agreeable first year law subjects.” Foundies is basically Year 12 Legal Studies accelerated, and is considered quite relaxed and fun. Be warned: the workload, just a 1500 word case note and a 3000 word essay on a debated legal issue, completely belies the effort expected in “pretty much every other unit of study.” Take advantage of the legal luminaries brought in as guest lecturers while you can, the School loves bringing back alumni who’ve landed themselves a spot on the bench. It makes first-years feel special. If becoming a High Court justice is your ultimate aspiration, remember that every single other member of the cohort is trying to do exactly the same. The law students who succeed tend to do so in spite of being law students – recall that Kirby was President of the University of Sydney Union and the SRC too. Doesn’t hurt employability.

Seminars are a sweaty educational delight Unlike your moustachioed brothers in the Arts faculty, you’ll spend much of semester far from the Manning crowd. Law students have to cope with some serious workloads: drinking through stuvac, hitting the books on the day of the exam and skating through with a distinction is not a thing for you guys. But take heart, less beer and Heidegger means more career and that’s what counts later on. Seriously, go to class. Once you fall behind, it’s nearly impossible to catch up and your life becomes living hell. Or as one student put it: “SYDNEY LAW SCHOOL? Why are you like this???!? Excessive readings! readings! readings! Do not provide outline solutions! WHAT THE HECK? How are we suppose to learn then??????? How are we suppose to improve?” Sound. As you might have gathered, assessment loads get pretty heavy. It’s not unknown for exams or single essays to be worth in excess of 80% of your ﬁnal mark. You should also expect to fork out up to $1,000 every year on textbooks. As one student put it, “it’s a fact of life that Law words cost more than normal words.” This is one of those subjects where a semesterly trip to the SRC bookshop (top-ﬂoor, Wentworth) or textbookexchange.com is a must.

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Medicine

If your name just doesn’t feel long enough after you complete your undergraduate studies, why not beef it up with a veritable novella of post-nominals? After several intense years of hard labour, it’s the least you will deserve. It’s no revelation that studying Medicine at Sydney Uni is incredibly prestigious, challenging and rewarding for the passionate. If you are looking for revelations, you won’t find them in this article that has been gathered from a relatively small number of responses to our survey. However, the Medical Society publishes a highly rated guide to Medicine called Feet First available online at http://www.medsoc.usyd.edu.au. Get on it. Like every faculty, one cannot claim that lecturers and tutors are universally exemplary, but respondents to our survey were either very polite or very impressed. Considering students cited the theoretical component as the least engaging of the three that will comprise the degree, lecturers receive an uncharacteristic amount of gush. Shout-outs are in order for John ‘amazing’ Mitrofanis, Deborah ‘supportive’ Bryce, Rick Varma and Richard Hillman; the last two of whom are praised for their engaging delivery of Advanced STI: Sex and Society. More generally, students were glowing about units associated with anatomy and hematology. The administration side of lectures fell a little foul this year, with a torrent of complaints about cancelled lectures, some lecturers being serially tardy and logistically confusing at times. Other students took issue with the horrendously packed timetable that would often spell out seven consecutive hours of lectures, leaving many contemplating a career as a cadaver. Biochemistry attracted similar thoughts. Pracs conducted on the main campus proved to be a welcome break from the flood of information that engulfs you during lectures. Despite being overcrowded, many students recognized that these classes were essential to complement the lectures. There is only so much you can learn from a powerpoint, and working with specimens (as scarce as they might be) injects a bit more enthusiasm into most students. Be shrewd enough to investigate the kind of assumed knowledge for each subsequent unit. Respondents advised to get yourself some hand-me-down notes, preview them before each lecture and add to them daily. In response to student requests and the surprise continuation of the 21st century, the Med School recently opened a discussion blog via which students can ask questions and share their thoughts. The project copped some flack from respondents who were irritated by the lack of moderator, direction and purpose in the forum. In any case, MedSoc is far more socially and academically profitable to be involved in.

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Some responses cited the well-oiled machine of a society as the ‘best thing about studying at Sydney University.‘ Props. By far the biggest hit of the degree is the clinical component, which was described as ‘inspiring’. It’s particularly pleasing to note how small and effective these placements are, with around 6 people in each group. Your clinical placement will likely make or break your experience of medicine – but mostly make. The reputation and location of Sydney University mean that lucky students have access to some of the best hospitals in Australia, and accordingly some of the best residents, specialists and GPs. In a rare bout of administrative efficiency, there seemed to be minimal hiccups in the organization of clinical placements this year. The introduction of online applications was lauded for its flexibility – a characteristic of studying that is at a premium yet exceedingly necessary for many working Med students. Clinical tutorials are considered far more rewarding, informative and practical than any amount of lectures or lab based pracs could ever be. Assessment policies in the course seem to be hit and miss. It is hardly a secret that med exams are both expansive and challenging. Barrier exams appear to be a form of medieval torture that require tremendous amounts of recall and really sort the dedicated from the bunch. Most students advised making daily contributions toward study because not only do assessments pile up toward the end of semester, but you are thrown into exams with minimal stuvac. Further complaints on the assessment front involved a lack of feedback on assessments, making it supremely difficult to improve. This, coupled with puzzlingly vague criteria that left students utterly confused as to what they should study, makes the whole experience of studying both uncertain and frustrating. Respondents also reported that exams often contained weird and wonderful content that had not been the focus of lecture materials, and advised others to have a chat to more senior students about the key areas to prepare for. Ancillary course costs for Medicine students are phenomenal. Textbooks are not set for subjects and are left to personal choice. Unfortunately, many in their first year spend their month’s rent on a mountain of books, only one of which proves to be useful. Get some tips from MedSoc about this. Apparently they’re the bomb when it comes to course advice. So buckle in and glove up. One day you’ll probably save my life. Or perhaps less glamorously remove a backspace I accidentally choke on. Thanks in advance.

SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Music For all those playing at home, Music at Sydney University is conducted (HA!) through the Conservatorium of Music, more affectionately known as The Con. If you have more talent than you can poke a baton at, settle in for a long ride at Australia’s oldest and most prestigious musical training institution. For those who can’t write and perform a symphony in a coma, the Con offers particular (less rigorous) subjects to students studying through the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Compared to the insanely busy schedules of Con music students, home-brand Arts students can be defined as ‘fulltime students’ about as accurately as Michael Spence can be described as ‘a professor’.

Pro: inspiring tutors and lecturers Con: just a nickname Gaining acceptance to the Con is incredibly diﬃcult. Only those who are truly gifted, hard working and passionate tend to be granted a key to the castle because, bluntly, the Con is the best. You can bash the reprehensible elitism all you like, but Con students and the works they produce are fucking amazing. Like all facets of the Arts industry, steady employment is generally elusive, but there’s no denying that completing a degree at the con won’t help just a tiny bit. As a result, Con students have access to some state of the art facilities and, according to some survey respondents, ‘some lecturers are also state of the art.’ For instrument and performance majors, it’s generally good news on the tutor front. The Counter Course survey indicated that most are highly knowledgeable and often transformative in your musical journey. However, there were several complaints that the minimal contact hours with tutors left students wanting and needing more. Considering how your Principal of Study tutor can mean the diﬀerence between graduating with skills or graduating as Liszt, we suggest you prepare well, cram hard and if you’re tutor isn’t precisely what you need – change! You can always talk to the department or contact our friendly, non-allergenic SRC caseworkers (batteries not included).

available, be exceptionally wary of the bell curve marking that inexplicably still applies to this tiny cohort of up-andcomers. For the fourth consecutive year, Lewis Cornell receives glowing praise from students, who remark ‘it is worth studying here just to experience his teaching’. Mazel Tov to Lewis. Highly Commended certificates also awarded to Carolyn Watson and Allan Maddox. However, regard for students seems to start and end at good teaching. Navigating your way around student administration is a mammoth feat that is about as enjoyable as colonic irrigation. Our survey revealed that even the simplest tasks such as changing subjects or booking rooms take several years to complete. The problem lies in the maze of conflicting opinions between different departments who ‘all have different opinions on what the rules are’. Complaints also ascribed the lack of student support to the Con being a satellite campus. Degree planning is a must. There is always a contingent of final year students who prematurely crack open the champagne and prepare for their lives of tortured, drunken artistry only to discover they have to return to the castle to finish off an overlooked subject or two. Check your core units. Seriously. Advice from students ranged from ‘have a plan B’ to avoiding Manning. We feel the latter is controversial, but probably fair. Predictably, studying at the Con requires a great deal of commitment and work, and respondents commented that you should take yourself a little more seriously than you are used to. As detached from main campus as Con students may feel, tight-knit communities and a Student Association on the rise make student life unique and rewarding. Despite its nickname, there are a buttload of pros to studying at the Con.

Assessment criteria at the Con are prohibitively subjective. Students complained that the whims and fetishes of particular markers mean that grades differ violently and arbitrarily. Unsurprisingly, jazz students weren’t so jazzed about being hit with the most random marks, but some advanced subjects such as Honours Research Methods (Writing Skills for Music Professions) mitigated this uncertainty by providing very detailed and comprehensive feedback. This seems to reflect a relatively high standard of teaching staff in most Con departments. Providing that the Opera major remains S T U D EN T S R EPR E S EN TAT I V E CO U N C I L , U N I V ER S I T Y O F S Y D N E Y

Fuck opera - make way for new instrument majors

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Nursing It is deeply unclear why management at Sydney Uni has such little regard for the Department of Nursing and Midwifery. Budgetary constraints have slowly hacked away at the resources of the department for several years now, and students have been really pleased with the decline in teaching quality, poor organization and delivery of units. Despite the fact that the department is as understaffed as the profession, there are still a number of redeeming features to studying Nursing and many students still seemed intent on getting their degree, enjoying the course overall. The course is split between theoretical and clinical components, with the latter generally being agreed as the degree’s saving grace. In particular, High Acuity Nursing gave students an opportunity to escape the clutches of what can sometimes be a pretty intense marriage to textbooks and readers. According to many students, studying can be a very lonely and solitary existence, with a substantial portion of the course completed at home. When you are occasionally deemed suitable for human contact at University, small classes and overworked but dedicated staff make learning a joy. Most teachers are ‘born educators’ according to one respondent, and are always willing to take additional classes if need be. The key is to know your teachers. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and request more from them; remember that you are paying for your degree. Or at least you spent an awful lot of time filling out paperwork that made the government pay for your degree. Dr. Chris Gordon seems to be well-loved by students, whilst Andrea McCloughlin receives similar reviews. NURS5085 Mental Health is described as ‘amazing, organized and interesting’, which is a subject jackpot in our books. You can also expect a relatively autonomous research week around July, which provides students with probably the most choice they’ll receive from an otherwise demanding and controlling master. Ensure you use your nous and initiative during this week, because students report it to be as rewarding or as bleak as you make it. Practice labs are somewhat of a gem in this course, and tutors are generally excellent to guide you through these challenging sessions. The sociological aspects to the course copped a shellacking as ‘the worst’ subjects to take and often described as boring or deeply irrelevant. And if you want a sympathetic ear, or even a functional one, or even an ear, you will not find one at Student Services of Sydney Nursing School.

Understaffing has produced a lack of regard for students, resulting in the death of many simple requests and an endless source of frustration. Clinical Placement Officers receive no sympathy from students who lambasted them as ‘useless’ and ‘not up to the job’. You should also be prepared to fork out a pretty penny for ancillary course costs like lab coats, dissection kits and the chunkiest of textbooks, which can prove to be a massive bitch for Strugglus Studentus whose natural habitat is still to be found in Manning. If the horrendously overpriced textbooks at the Co-op give you a student aneurism, be sure to check out the SRC bookstore on the very top floor of Wentworth. Or for those with a stair aversion, textbookexchange.com is also pretty great. Assessments were reported to be excessive at times, and surprisingly heavy on essays. Some subjects have substituted meal times for assignments, lumping students with about ten per semester, before thumping them around the head with four exams. This becomes even more problematic when students complain about the sheer amount of content to be covered in subjects such as NURS5084. Respondents advised that notes should be kept throughout your degree, and in order to sort the gronks from the legends, at least flirt with the idea of forming a study group. Flirting with your study group is less recommended. Despite an underfunded department, and a perception that students are disconnected, one survey respondent had this to say - ‘people complain that there is no community and yet make no effort to create one. Get involved!’ Hear hear.

Nurses come from a diverse array of backgrounds and species

Recommended: NURS5085 Mental Health is ‘amazing, organised and interesting‘

Make the most of your research weeks and clinical placements! PAGE 36

SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Pharmacy If you ‘enjoy’ drugs, then it would be very amusing to watch you cope with a Pharmacy degree. That’s because extreme workloads, overcrowding and obscenely high contact hours will replace ‘Sammy, the purple unicorn,’ as your friend for the next four years. The consensus was that the Department of Pharmacy offers a very vocationally-focused degree, which puts an emphasis on giving you the skills you need to work in the industry. One thing you won’t get is any subject choice. The degree is divided into 4 main streams: Pharmacology, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pharmacy Practice and Pharmaceutics. These are worked into a fixed degree structure, which means that you minimise repetition of content and also get a feeling of progression through your degree. Respondents were generally pretty enthusiastic about the subject matter, saying that although at times teaching could be better the stuff they were taught was genuinely interesting. You’d hope so, otherwise it might be a bit shit to spend 26 hours a week learning it.

Pro: vocationally-based - employability win

this to be a response to declining attendance and students not taking class time seriously. You are paying for this education. This is not High School, and it is unacceptable for lecturers to think they can ‘punish’ students. Some of the teaching staff are very highly rated by students. Lecturer Rebekah Moles, the third year coordinator, is one of the best in her field. Respondents said she is approachable and helpful when giving student support, knows the faculty profession extremely well and (always a plus) is prompt with emails. Romano Fois also deserves a special mention too for his passion to teaching. Beware, though, even the best teacher will struggle against extreme overcrowding. Your labs will sometimes have up to 60 people, which obviously limits the extent to which your instructor can give you individual attention and answer your questions. On the whole, however, students said that practical elements of the course were what they looked forward to every week and were really well taught. Final exams can often have extreme weightings (6080%), but they’re apparently fairly straight-forward. They have heavy content, but if you have contacts with past papers you’ll do fine - if not, you’re stuffed.

Con: still living in the dark ages

Based on how poorly the Department has implemented eLearning, it won’t be surprising that these people are “studying” drugs. Given that you’ll have to do all the courses we talk about anyway, it’s probably a bit useless to tell you what to expect. If nothing else we’re letting you mentally prepare for the shit ones. PHAR1821 involves a lot of group work, with most groups randomly allocated. While group work is usually taxing at the best of times, being placed in a group with people who don’t contribute to group work or fail to turn up to meetings is frustrating for those students doing the work and who’d actually like to pass. Don’t let them dump you with all the work, remember that you can always tell your tutor and they’re obliged to take it into account. PHAR2822 has a lot of compulsory tutorial hours, which respondents said were drawn out and covered common sense areas that didn’t need extra support. A warning: PHAR2823 with Kim Chan no longer puts lectures online – the subject covers some incredibly in-depth material that would make my Arts student brain shrivel and die, so not being able to access recordings is unfair since lectures constitute the majority of examinable material. It is also unfair to expect students who need to work part-time to pay for uni to attend three lectures a week without fail. Disturbingly, some respondents believed

Students found growing ancillary course costs a burden, but essential You can expect a raft of course costs. For equipment like dispensing weights, lab coats and textbooks you can expect to fork out $300+ per year. Remember, for cheap, secondhand textbooks you can always check out the SRC Bookshop. For cheaper equipment (like $120 dispensing weights) the Sydney University Pharmacy Association (SUPA) is there for you. SUPA runs a number of social events, which we suggest you get involved with. Given that you’ll be spending so much time around your cohort, you may as well get to know them. Pharm students tend to be a pretty tight-knit group, so “roll with it.”

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Biology

If you’re a lover of freedom, fresh air and flexibility (both timetable and physical), then chances are you don’t study biology. And if you do, you’ll have to repress all of these desires until you’ve finished playing with soil and water. Ironically, many students reported that content could often be as clear as mud. Sydney University is renowned for providing Biology students with a broad array of subjects from which to choose their focus. One student even went so far as to cite this freedom as the ‘only reason’ they attend the university. At least the pretty quad wasn’t the clincher this time. It is exceedingly unfortunate, then, that biology units continue to be cut down, especially in the senior years. Stay tuned for more news from your SRC. Unsurprisingly, many students found pracs and demonstrations to be the most intriguing aspect of biology study. Pracs in Living Systems BIOL1002 were particularly instructive and the tutors were abundantly knowledgeable. If you ever get the chance, attend a lab hosted by a mystical figure known to the handbook editors only as ‘Demo Dan.’ This veritable hero of the department made biology labs a thrill, and even surpassed Manning for entertainment value. This is even more impressive when you consider that prac classes are seriously bloated, with as many as 50 in one class. A special mention goes to Murray Thompson, who ‘forces you to learn’. We don’t know exactly what form this enforcement takes, but for the unconscionably lazy student, make sure you get yourselves along to one of his classes for a firm kick up the academic backside. Despite an easy workload and an assignment worthy of completion by the average toddler, respondents found Concepts in Biology senselessly boring and a bit shit. Another source of extreme boredom was found in the rote learning method employed by some sub-optimal lecturers. Teachers in Marine Biology are lampooned for being supremely unhelpful and providing minimal if any guidance. In a rare marriage of geekiness and snobbery, some respondents criticised Botanists for being too nerdy, and found other lecturers ‘too into their subjects’...? But fear not! The SRC is running a campaign to have passionate lecturers tranquilised before classes to achieve optimal sleeping environments. Assessments are a strange beast in Biology – the department harbours a deep and fiery hatred for anything that isn’t multiple-choice. These usually take the form of tiny online quizzes that each comprise about one billionth of your final mark. Final exams are worth about 60%, which is pretty luxurious for the science faculty. Be aware that Human Biology is a prerequisite for any neuroscience major – plan your degree early and thoroughly. Clamber down to the SRC offices if you need any help, advice or human contact. PAGE 38

Chemistry

Students’ appraisal of the Chemistry department was more glowing than a Chernobyl survivor at Mardi Gras. The vast majority of respondents gushed over seriously competent teaching staff that generally explained even the most complex chemical concepts with clarity and engagement. Despite the overwhelming workload that demands inconvenient contact hours as well as countless sessions of intellectual digestion, those with a passion for beakers or nutty professor aspirations will feel right at home here. First year chemistry subjects are shockingly broad, and can often prove quite confronting for the less adept. The course is designed to present students with a range of chemistry facets primarily to encourage early specialization – highly recommended by many counter course respondents. You don’t want to bumble through a host of uninspiring units that you will never build on. Those keen beans who come straight from school will sadly experience a seamless transition in terms of class time. Timetabling can be pesky, with three one hour lectures spread across the week leaving many contemplating innovative mass criminality involving Bunsen burners and mature age students. 8am and 9am lectures appear at face value to be sessions of medieval torture, but many respondents surprisingly noted how engaging they were. CHEM2401 and CHEM2402 both feature these artsstudent-nightmares, so be prepared for a bit of fatigue. We’re sure you can brew up some crude antidote in your lab later. Adam Bridgeman does a stellar job as first year Chemistry coordinator, being both supremely contactable and dedicated to students. Special mentions to Matt Todd, Deana D’Alessandra and Richard Paynes. Solid State Chemistry with Chris Ling gets rave reviews, but is reportedly very challenging. Like many science units, there is a mountain of assumed knowledge that can make or break your semester. Our advice is to check any associated subjects in lower years and scab some notes from a friend for some thrilling bedtime reading. Although the department is praised for providing a wealth of online resources and notes that will make your life much easier, students recommended that you not be shy in class. Asking questions not only makes you look and feel less of a doofus, but the entire class will likely be better off having concepts explained more clearly to them. You will spend most of your life inside the famously ugly Chemistry building, that looks suspiciously like the UTS tower and the 1960s had an illegitimate baby that threw up on Eastern Avenue. Don’t be fooled by this obscene exterior; the department is at the cutting edge of its field and is impressively well resourced. Assessment schedules are one of the only downsides to studying Chemistry. To say the final exams are weighty is an understatement; they are morbidly obese. You are looking at 70% finals and little other assessment through the semester. SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Geosciences

If you’re caught between a rock and a hard place, then you could do worse than Geosciences. Students who do geosciences are generally pretty enthusiastic about their major – but also slightly arrogant about their career prospects. To quote one student, “heh heh heh all the money is in rocks.” We were a little puzzled, but then we ﬁgured it’s probably something to do with the mining boom. This is a department which puts a priority on your teaching and learning. Across the board, lecturers were said to be passionate, approachable and committed to undergraduate education. Junior units were excellent – shout-outs go, once again, to Tom “The Telescope” Hubble and Geoﬀ ‘Rockin’’ Clarke who take junior geology unit GEOS1003. Tom was said to be “insane,” but also a top-notch academic who really digs rocks. The discipline also maintains a fantastic honours programme, which is rigorous and highly valuable to your academic development. Sometimes you’ll need to harass your lecturer for feedback, but if they don’t show up to their consultation hours keep emailing or phoning them as much as you can and you’ll usually give in. Don’t be afraid to demand it from them – you’re paying for this education, and you have a right to demand that they respect you as they would a client.

Recommended: we hear GEOS1003 with Tom Hubble will rock your world. Geosciences emerged from 2010 with a raft of subject cuts by Faculty administration. While these had the potential to completely devastate student outcomes, academics and undergrads combined in a campaign to ‘Save Geosciences.’ This was remarkably successful in retaining a number of subjects which would otherwise have been axed. Respondents recommended sticking with the discipline, advising that Sydney Uni was still a “safe choice” if Geosciences is your passion. However, you can expect to pay a few hundred dollars a semester on textbooks once you get to second year, and obviously you’ll have to fork out money on lab coats and extra materials. The SRC is always available to give shortterm emergency loans if you’re having trouble paying for it. While arts students run scared from the idea of being locked inside a lab, the practical elements of the course were very highly regarded by students. Labs are, on the whole, not very overcrowded, which means a lot more individual attention from instructors. You can also rock up to ﬁeld trips anywhere from the Great Barrier Reef to Orange to the Northern Territory, and while some excursions are apparently better than others they’re all said to be worth the expense. They’re really highly rated for hands-on practical experience.

I.T.

When IT students aren’t busy planning to sue Zuckerberg, they can be found complaining about their course. Whilst opinions were divided with regard to lecturers, most responses painted the department as out-of-date and wracked by suboptimal teaching facilities. One respondent, when asked what advice they would give to other students, in an uncharacteristic willingness to exercise, commanded ‘RUN!’ We are still unsure if this is general health advice or an indictment of the department, but both seem to make sense. Some courses receive a good rap for their ingenuity and opportunity for initiative. COMP3109 with Bernhard Scholz requires students to not only get intimately acquainted (a rare occurrence) with several programming languages, but also create their own. COMP2007 and COMP2907 are well reviewed, despite an apparently awful lecturer who bores students with the intoxicating charisma of a cactus. This is reflective of many lecturers who fail to engage students with what should be incredibly interesting material. Tutors seem to be in stark contrast to this, who are generally younger and cool enough to base tutorials around DOTA gags. Quality. The department does little to ensure that all tutorials are this fun, awarding participation marks simply for lolloping into class vaguely on time, let alone contributing. Steer clear of the Research Methods Course, which is reportedly a ‘waste of time’, and seemingly irrelevant to the rest of the degree. For those after a grounding in general concepts and principles of programming, be aware that Sydney Uni offers a wide array of extremely specialized subjects such as COMP52214 and COMP5247, which focus exclusively on advanced Java programming. Other downers include INFO5990 Professional Practice in IT, described as a ‘user-pays advertorial for the Australian Computer Society’. The subject is, however, compulsory in order to receive the proper accreditation that will also enable you to legally assault Stephen Conroy. Bob Kummerfeld’s course IT Security takes out the gong for being seriously useful and also providing students with an insight into the top level of the profession. As intense as assessments may be in the IT department, students generally agree that they are incredibly instructive and help to consolidate the disparate elements of many subjects. If you have a deficit of logic knowledge, then you’re in for a wild ride in most units, which require a certain amount of assumed knowledge. Given that course outlines are castigated for being inaccurate and incomplete. But no, you did not read the assessment schedule wrong; the final exam is often worth around 70%, leaving many students contemplating the ways in which grievous bodily harm can be administered via the use of Ethernet cables. Enjoy.

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Maths If you’ve chosen to do mathematics at Sydney University, our deepest condolences. It’s not for everyone, and it’s rarely for anyone. Despite this, students seem to harbour a deep and passionate love for lecturers and tutors in the discipline. Most study maths in the course of completing Engineering or Science degrees, which often translates into huge class sizes especially in earlier years. These classes are bastions of study hangovers and huge-ass workloads that manifest in homework rather than actual faceto-face class time. The range of subjects oﬀered at Sydney University is pretty broad and grows exponentially each year, giving your average Einstein a wealth of choice. There is as much here for the pure maths nut as there is for ye with a statistics fetish. If you seriously struggled with HSC General Maths, don’t fret. More failure awaits you in university mathematics courses. For reals, there’s always Arts.

End-of-semester workload can be dangerous. Passion (and Red Bull) will get you through! Unsurprisingly, the maths major is reportedly well structured and progresses logically from year to year. There are, however, several snags. First year subjects are often only worth three credit points and yet require the same amount of application and study as the heftier six point subjects. Not only did this not make a great deal of sense (to the most logically minded students at Sydney University), it also appears a distinctly inconvenient way of cramming more variety into your degree, and then not rewarding you for it. It’s like making you eat a whole pizza, but some slices taste like feet. Maths also institutes an assessment schedule that was clearly designed by a chronic idiot. They lure you into a comforting but false sense of moderated workloads and manageable study sessions, not unlike a serial killer feeds you copious amounts of candy, just before he viciously barebacks you with a shovel.

throughout the semester doesn’t guarantee you a decent mark – students recounted being blindsided by the exam on several occasions. A common refrain from respondents advised discussing your assignments with others at least once a week, because maths is one of those pesky subjects where making a mistake early on can mean your whole solution goes down the gurgler. A handy byproduct to this discussion is human interaction, which many respondents claimed to lack and recommended to anyone wishing to stay saner than they are. But there are some major pluses to studying here. Firstly, lecturers and tutors tend to be clinically diagnosed as geniuses. In particular, Anthony Henderson and Florica Cirstea get fantastic grades for making otherwise boring and tedious units a veritable party of brainiacs. Some students did complain that lecturers and tutors move too swiftly for even the more gifted of budding mathematicians, but most first year tutors were considered very approachable and ’readily available’. Be on the look out for MATH2965, in which no new content is actually learnt, just a continuation of its prerequisite units. Students weren’t so pleased with this. Linear algebra in MATH2961 received a beating for covering essentially the same material as first year subjects and offering insufficient development. However, if you are finding the content a bore, then students generally report a much higher level of intrigue and teaching in the advanced stream available in senior years. But unless you’re a prodigy plotting to put NASA in its place, students are generally adequately challenged by both the content and the sometimes-unique ways in which it is delivered.

According to many respondents, the torrent of pesky assessments that they hit you with a week or two out from stuvac can prove seriously detrimental to marks. Assignment weightings are also truly bizarre, with most assessments throughout the semester worth around 5% and the ﬁnal exam generally worth 60-80%. Primarily, this means maths students are required to keep on top of their work more than other faculties because the really brain-bending concepts are dumped on you at the end of the unit. This absurd weighting also means that diligence PAGE 4 0

Our survey indicated that students thought maths should grow up and solve its own problems.

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Psychology Perhaps it’s the rudeness of staff, the insensitivity to student feedback, or the frequent refusal to record lectures and provide good online materials, but the psych department’s disturbing relationship with its students makes it a prime candidate for clinical therapy. I’d be tempted to say that they just hate students, but I’ll leave the diagnosis to the experts. We got more responses from psychology majors than any other discipline, and they were generally pretty blunt: “staff don’t treat students as future psychologists, more like school children.” Students who aspired to go onto a career in psychology were also pretty damning: there are apparently “few industry links and little opportunity to experience real work experience in this area. Even research experience was impossible to come by.” A lack of feedback on written assessments is also an issue. Exams, especially, are widely perceived as not well thought out. They often don’t let students demonstrate what they learn during the semester, falling back on basic concepts covered elsewhere. The high weighting placed on exams across psychology subjects - 50-60% - is a very high weighing in a highly competitive course. Students suggested that more rigorous engagement in report writing and experiments would be better forms of learning and assessment than rote learning for exams. This is a department famous for its ‘experiments’ with first years. Last year, nearly 2000 students enrolled in PSYC1001. The result? Despite booking out Eastern Avenue Auditorium, biggest theatre on campus, it was so overcrowded that firstyears literally could not fit in the room. The fuckwits running the department decided that the best solution was to move a large number of students into an over-flow lecture theatre and watch a streamed recording live. Leaving aside how exploitative it is that first years had to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of watching a film twice a week, the technology is woefully inadequate. The pictures are often grainy, the sound system rarely works and the stream sometimes just cuts straight out. It’s also dubious whether a man on a screen can ever really substitute for a lecturer in the flesh.

#winning - anything with Lisa Zadro #losing - unbearably huge classes If you can get a seat (which you will do, thanks SRC), then you should be in for a fairly challenging and rewarding first year. These courses, PSYC1001 and PSYC1002, give a really interesting and diverse introduction to the discipline, and the online quizzes throughout the semester are easy to complete and a great way to learn all the technical definitions by osmosis. Also be aware that psychology has come to mean one thing at Sydney Uni: Lisa Zadro. Take this student’s advice: “PSYC1002, Abnormal Psychology (PSYC3018) and Social Psychology (PSYC3017) were fantastic, and overall, anything with Lisa Zadro in it - TAKE IT!! Never thought I’d actually look forward to a lecture, but alas, Dr. Zadro made it happen!” Get. On. Board. Most senior units, however, are a bit hit-and-miss. Third year lectures have 300+ students so unlike smaller departments you don’t really get to know the teaching staff. Don’t expect your lecturer to know your name. Cognitive and Social Psychology (PSYC2013) and Personality and Intelligence 1 (PSYC2014) were said to be “awful, awful subjects” that you should take only at your peril. Advanced Statistics for Psychology (PSYC3010) is apparently very poorly organized, lacking a quick introductory review, which is standard in most senior units. It often takes only a few minutes and ensures that people realise what previous knowledge is being drawn on.

It’s lucky that you have an SRC to Stand Up For Student Rights. We succeeded in negotiating a pretty obvious solution: as of 2012, all ﬁrst year psych courses will be held in the Seymour Centre (where every student can comfortably sit). See, this is why you should join your SRC. It gets shit done.

PSYC1938 ‘Psyschology of Sleep Disorders‘ is particularly demanding

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Sydney College of the Arts Telling your parents that you’re going to SCA is a bit like applying for unemployment benefits. One usually implies the other, so it’s probably more efficient to cover both in the same conversation. Fill out the paperwork by flinging a bucket of fluoro paint at your nearest Centrelink office and then leg it to Rozelle where you will spend the rest of your days hugging the sandstone at the seductive SCA campus. The amount of freedom you will experience in your degree is astounding, leaving students often at a loose end. The studio will become your bastion of tortured artistry where you’ll spend most of your time attaching skin to a lamppost with unicorn saliva and crying misunderstood tears into tumblers of Micronesian coffee. Okay, not actually, but you will spend an awful lot of time being alternative in there. Luckily, students describe SCA with colourful praise and recommend it to anyone with a serious passion for Art.

The SCA dean requires the surgical removal of one ear upon enrolment.

Following your dreams will inevitably lead you to the Sydney College of the Arts, and it is everything you expected it to be. Students rave about the dedication and innovation of the teachers, who are all too willing to help you out with your major works outside of class time. Beyond that, the fact that most tutors are practitioners in their art provides an unending source of inspiration to students who are still stagnantly stuck in their Coles jobs and haven’t yet plunged themselves into a Bohemian life of creativity. Shane Haseman, Jaqueline Millner and Ann Elias are all worshipped as ‘the best thing about studying’. Print Media Theory gets a good rap, and despite the lack of Dumbledore’s Pensieve, The Art of Memory is also praised. To add icing to this delicious pedagogical cake, class sizes are satisfyingly small enough to allow for engaged learning and strong relationships to form amongst students and tutors.

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However, there are some big fat snags to getting the most out of your study at SCA. The first is that you could single handedly keep the economy afloat simply by purchasing all of the materials you will need for making your major works. It’s not unusual for students to spend in the thousands on making works that will get good marks. In addition, it is supremely difficult to skimp on costs, accordingly skimp on quality and still gun your course. The SCA does provide quite a few scholarships that range from $500 to $5000 based on merit and financial need, so make sure you spend a bit of time on your application to avoid having to skip meals in order to pay for the large spherical hedge you’re sculpting into John Howard’s bottom. To add insult to injury, textbooks are often outrageously costly. We recommend you check out the SRC bookshop on the top floor of the Wentworth building or textbookexchange.com to save yourself a few bucks. Also contact the SRC for a quick $50 loan that you might occasionally need to tide yourself over until sacred payday. Or until your friend reimburses you for those cocktails. Darn you, Kuleto’s. Unsurprisingly, studying at the SCA involves a near-fatal amount of freedom and choice. Several students reported being confused about direction and clarity in both subjects and assessments. Make sure you investigate all of the subjects properly to ensure a balance of variety but also accumulated progress. Assessments are often totally devoid of structure and comprehensible criteria; nobody really knows what is required of an artwork beyond making it pleasing for the marker. You will be engaging in work that is definitively subjective and can leave you wanting feedback that is a little more constructive than ‘didn’t really like it. Soz.’ But if you really dig your work and don’t want your blood sweat and thousand dollars to go to waste, then have a chat to the Sydney College of the Arts Student Society. They have a few galleries that will probably be willing to exhibit your work so that others can bask in its glory. Get on it.

Freedom: lots Passion: intense Costs: outrageous Jobs: none Hipsters: many

Drugs: probs Emotions: all Tutors: hip Jobs: seriously. none.

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Veterinary Science People think that just because Vet Science is about animals, it’s less work than human medicine. People are wrong. In fact, because there are so many species of animal you learn how to fix in Vet Science, it wouldn’t be a stretch to contend that Medicine is actually an easier course. I mean there aren’t many species of Human apart from people and college residents. The course is incredibly demanding and will often preclude social lives, romantic pursuits and the retention of sanity. Vet Sci starts off by bombarding you with theory that will slowly give way to more and more pracs until your placement in fifth year. More on that later. Before commencing study, it is recommended to take a gap year. This is for several reasons, the primary of which is to hibernate for 365 days in order to prepare you for a life of twenty-four hour study mayhem. A gap year will also allow you to save up for your final year of study that involves a rotation of 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. Obviously, there is little opportunity for employment to keep you afloat so start planning early how you’re going to get through it apart from sheer thrift. Remember to check out eligibility for Youth Allowance; alternatively consider embezzlement or begging. And the outrageous ancillary course costs aren’t just confined to fifth year.

contact hours. As tempting as it may be at times, keep the scalpels in the drawer. The SRC legal service will not be happy. Unsurprisingly, pracs were universally preferred to the theoretical component of the course. Lectures can often be piggybacked all day long, trapping you in the one lecture theatre from 9 to 5. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to just cop this hard slog. As fun and rewarding as pracs can be, our survey indicated that they are often hampered by poor administration. Because they can take up a big slab of your time, ensure that you feel comfortable with your rotation supervisor. Chat to the SRC if you have serious concerns. Don’t let out dungeon-like offices throw you; none of us are infectious. Timetabling also cops a few bad comments from students, reported to be inflexible and totally dispassionate when students have issues. Don’t be alarmed when you first receive your timetable – printing just one can often use several cartridges of ink. So. Much. Class.

YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE HERE

Textbooks will set you back a pretty penny as well as equipment like stethoscopes, dissection kits, thermometers, boots and lab coats to name a few. If Co-op prices have you in fits of financial rage, don’t pay them. Instead, pay a visit to the SRC discounted bookstore on the top floor of Wentworth. VetSoc (the Veterinary Science society) also has a sweet deal with Bayer that will save you some money on equipment, so check that out.

Get involved in VetSoc to keep you sane Grab some hand-me-down notes for your absurdly weighted exams

Students also recommend that you get involved in VetSoc to ‘keep you sane and happy’ throughout a rigorous ﬁve years. Luckily, year coordinators are reported to be approachable and available, so take advantage of this rare breed. You will also ﬁnd it rewarding and necessary to get along with your peers in such a small faculty with mind-bogglingly long

A typical Vet student timetable Shout-outs are in order for Jacqui Norris and Kate Bosward for their excellent delivery of Microbiology of Animal Disease, also described as ‘academically rigorous yet rewarding and excellent’. Their enthusiasm and engagement is infectious (BAM!). Watch out for some hefty exam weightings that can often lump 70 or 80% into a few hours. Worst case scenarios can involve nightmares that have you enduring eight exams or 100% weighted closed-book exams. Steer clear of Parasitology of Animal Disease, which is described as ‘very disappointing’ in comparison with other aspects of Animal Disease. Overall, teaching was given a pretty balanced review. Good work, team. So settle in for a long and hard slog. All to ensure that the rest of us have healthy animals to eat and healthy animals with which to snuggle. Hopefully not the same one, though.

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Special Consideration The University’s exact statement on special consideration is that “assessment practices are designed to ensure that conditions are fair to all students”. Therefore, special consideration is available to students who experience illness or misadventure immediately before or during an exam or assessment. We’re going to say it now – there is NO guarantee that you will be granted special consideration. This is only a basic guide to special consideration, each faculty have their own policy. So make sure you are familiar with the one that is relevant to you.

Special arrangements for assessments or exams usually result in one of the following outcomes:

• Alternative dates for submission of assessments (extension)

•

Provision of alternative assessment tasks

•

Alternative examination times/arrangements

If you’re unsure about whether you’re eligible for special arrangements, come down and see the SRC caseworkers – they are the most qualified people to deal with Uni admin.

You must apply for special consideration within 5 working days of the exam or assessment deadline. You fill out the special consideration form and give it to the relevant person in the faculty. Your application must include proof of your situation, e.g. something from your doctor, a police report or a statutory declaration by yourself. In the rare occasion where your supporting documentation cannot be obtained within 5 working days, hand in your application on time with an explanation about the supporting documentation and an estimation of when it will be available. The outcome of a successful exam special consideration application may vary. Some faculties offer successful applications a supplementary exam; others look at adjusting the previous exam (if you sat it). It is a good idea to know what your faculty may do, but not essential. The important part is getting the application in within 5 working days.

Special Arrangements Special arrangements are available for students who are unable to meet assessment requirements or attend examinations. Applications for special arrangements have to be lodged BEFORE the date of the assessment or exam – how long before varies from department to department, but naturally a good rule is to have your application in as early as possible. Some situations that you may qualify you for special arrangements include: in you sustain an injury which prevents you from writing or if you have a sporting, cultural or political commitments. Remember that any application MUST have supporting documentation to prove the veracity of your claim.

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Long Term Illness or Disability Any ongoing disability, illness or health problem (including things like depression and sever anxiety as well as temporary incapacity, i.e. a broken arm) may allow you to register with Disability Services. This registration will mean that a Disability Services Officer can help assess what needs to be put in place to ensure that you can study on an equal playing field. Possible arrangements may include specialised help such as computer software, extra time in exams, sitting in a smaller exam room, having breaks during exams, longer due dates for assignments, access to resting rooms on campus. Contact Disability Services at 8627 8422.

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and Plagiarism Plagiarism

SRC HELP caseworkers have done heaps of work in the past helping students across many faculties who have run into trouble with allegations of plagiarism. The University takes plagiarism allegations very seriously. Basically, there are two types of plagiarism: 1. Dishonest plagiarism (intentional plagiarism). Basically this is when you know what you’re doing. You know you’re taking a risk and don’t kid yourself that what you’re doing is educational

Bibliography List all references in the bibliography with all the relevant information at the end of the assignment. As we mentioned earlier this diﬀers between departments, and some can be super anal – so make sure you check what style your department is after. You HAVE to do all of these things (and more) every time you write an assessment. If you don’t, you are plagiarising. The marker needs to know what you should get credit for and what is someone else’s work.

2. Negligent plagiarism (mucking up or forgetting referencing and quoting, not understanding fully what is required). SRC HELP say that it is not unusual for students to make mistakes when referencing and quoting and referencing, and therefore can be found to have plagiarised. The SRC HELP caseworkers can give you advice and support if you receive an alligation of plagiarism and advocate for you where necessary. Contact them on 9660 5222 or help@ src.usyd.edu.au If you want to avoid the issue completely then you need to get to know the faculty guide to referencing. Some departments (annoyingly) do it diﬀerently within faculties, but there are some general things to keep in mind: Using ideas or concepts read in a book Reference where you got them at the end of the sentence or group of sentences where you do this.

Fact: Medical certiﬁcates are not accepted in an application for special consideration - you will need a Professional Practitioners Certiﬁcate to be considered

Mona Kim: an original self portrait.

Using exact words from a text, article, newspaper, speech Put quotation marks around those words and a reference at the end of the sentence.

Make sure to get your application for Special Arrangements in EARLY check the guidelines with each department! Pro tip: this is not the gospel of Special Consideration. Always research faculty policy online S T U D EN T S R EPR E S EN TAT I V E CO U N C I L , U N I V ER S I T Y O F S Y D N E Y

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Words to know Absent Fail: Occurs when you don’t attend required tutorials or meet certain standards set by the Unit of Study. Not a fun thing, and counts towards your academic record. Make sure you read your Unit of Study Outline to check the requirements for attendance and assessments.

Credit Point (CP): Measurement of how much a Unit of Study is “worth” or how much work per week will be required to complete it. In the Faculty of Arts this is about 5 minutes per week per credit point, Faculty of Engineering is more like 3 hours per week per credit point.

Academic Board: Peak decision-making body in the University on all academic subjects, such as curriculum, academic standards and policy research, degrees and units of study offered. Academic Board reports to Senate. Many students sit on Academic Board including the President of the SRC and a student representative from each Faculty.

Dean: Head administrator of a faculty. Can generally be found in Faculty Board meetings, Senior Executive Group and cocktail functions for the high achievers in your faculty.

Admin Assistant: A person in your Faculty, School or Department to whom you have to submit paperwork or deal with in some way. Many studnts claim they are unhelpful and don’t like assisting students with their enquiries.

Discontinue Fail (DF): The result you receive in a Unit of Study if you withdraw after a date determined by your faculty. A Discontinue Fail counts on your academic record, so try to avoid these.

Assessment: A task that evaluates your knowledge or performance in a particular Unit of Study. These are generally not fun things and require you to study. Exams are potentially the most hated form but long research essays, quizzes, tutorial participation and practicum reports are other ways Units of Study determine your marks.

Discontinue Not Fail (DNF): The result your receive in a Unit of Study when you withdraw after the census date and before a date determined by your Faculty. Does not count on your academic record.

Census Date: A date set by the government whereby the University reports your enrolment details to government. Withdrawal from units after this date means you still have to pay HECS and you will receive a Discontinue Not Fail or Discontinue Fail if you withdraw after this date. Centre: A bunch of academics inside a faculty or school working on some cross disciplinary project. Centres generally offer excellent Units of Study, eg United States Study Centre or Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Chair of Department: Head administrator of an academic department. Sometimes the best lecturer in the Department. College: Organisation on campus that provides accommodation to students from the North Shore to live five minutes closer to university. Never expect to meet a person from college in one of your classes, they’ll often be busy recovering from the night before. Compulsory Unit of Study: Unit of Study that you must enrol in to complete your degree or major. If you fail to meet these requirements you will fail. Often these subjects are boring.

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Department: Smallest academic unit, generally the level at which Units of Study are taught and administered.

Elective Unit of Study: A Unit of Study whihc you choose to do, can either be for your major or in a different discipline if you can complete your major through other subjects. Pick enjoyable electives. Faculty: Largest academic unit at the university, answerable to Academic Board and the Senate. Faculties develop and offer degrees, meaning your enrolment is actually looked after by them. be warned they create some good degrees and others that just have long and good sounding names. Head of School: Head administrator of a school. Honours: Awarded to students for outstanding performance in a degree. Depending on your faculty, Honours may be awarded on academic achievement or an additional year of research based learning and a thesis. The best students are awarded University Medals. Lectopia: The university’s lecture recording system. Unfortunately most lecturers don’t use this. Lecture: Something that is generally held in large groups in large halls. You will spend most in Manning.

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Lecturer: A qualified academic who teaches a Unit of Study. Some of these people are excellent, others students often find them to be good sleeping music.

Seminar: A cross between a lecture and a tutorial. Many Units of Study replace tutorials with seminars to have larger class sizes to reduce costs.

Major: A collection of Units of Study from the same subject area studied to form a major (generally 36 senior credit points).

Senior Executive Group: A committee consisting of the Vice-Challeor and the Deans of every Faculty. The most senior committee in the University without any student representation.

Mature Age Student: A student who has enroled at this university over the age of 21. Unfortunately they have a reputation for asking questions when you really want to get out of class. Minor: A short collection units of study from the same subject area, generally 24 credit points, sometimes 18 credit points. MyUni: The online administrative portal for your degree. From MyUNI you can access details about your enrolment, exams, your emails and online Unit of Study websites.

Sydney University Sport & Fitness (SUSF): The Sports Union on campus, so if you want to go to the ym or take a relaxing swim theey are theunion to join. They also have many sports clubs which you can get involved with. Tutorial: A small class in which students discuss and interact with concepts presented in lectures. Unfortunately tutorials areoften over-crowded., leading to discussion time being limited on questions that students have.

National Union of Students: The peak body which represents the interests of tertiary students at a national level to the government, the universities and the general public. The National President for 2012 is Sydney Uni student, Donherra Walmsley.

Unit of Study (UoS): These are subjects you are required to study in order to complete a degree at the University. Their workload is defined by credit points, a standard subject of 9-12 hour workload is 6 credit points.. Each UoS has a course code and a level, for example a 2000-level subject is a second year subject.

Placement: Period of extramural study, involving practical study of the theory compontent of a Unit of Study in a “realworld” setting. Placements are comon in Education, Medicine and Vetinerary Science.

University of Sydney Union: The USU is the main service provider on campus and administers the Clubs ad Societies Program. You should definitely get involved with USU if you want to enjoy cultural life outside of the classroom.

Satellite Campus: Teaching campuses of the university outside the main Camperdown/Darlington Campus. Most other campuses have specific specialisationsuch as Health Sciences, Nursing and Music. Generally they are less fun than main campus.

Vice-Chancellor: Head Executive of the University of Sydney. The VC, with the help of the Senior Executive Group, makes sure that resolutions passed by Senate and Academic Board arre adhered to.

School: Administrative level between Faculties and Departments. In most cases, schools are purely administrative bodies that organise student services and allocate resources to departments. Generally you won’t have much to do with schools as they are generally just an administrative body.

WAM: Weighted Average Mark - a calculation of your mark, wherein your results are weighted according to the year of study; so third year results are weighted more heavily than your second year results which are weighted more heavily than first year subjects.. This may be used to determine your eligibility for honours in some departments, be sure to investigate this.

Senate: Peak decision-making body of the university. It passes resolutions on everything from the university’s stance on plagiarism and intellectual property, through investing the university’s money, to rubber-stamping the decisions of the Academic Board.

WebCT: The online Unit of Study website system for most faculties. It often doesn’t work as expected and the forum discussion boards are generally poorly used.

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How to not get screwed Once upon a time, I submitted an appeal inside the Faculty of Arts. Three months, one file gone AWOL, infinite phone calls, dozens of emails, two inexplicable unenrolments from the entire university, and nine pieces of conflicting advice later, I’m fed to the back teeth of the appeal system, and I want you not to have the same experience I did. The University stipulates in a number of policy statements, online and otherwise, that it has a commitment to “natural justice”. One way it ensures that is by providing avenues of appeal. This is unquestionably a worthwhile policy; it’s one designed to allow students to seek a second (and third and fourth) opinion on their academic results, and sometimes overturn the unfavourable ones. Particularly if you’re someone who is considering a degree change that requires a high GPA or WAM, or if your marks depend on research, it’s well worth knowing about the appeals process, and what to do if it gets ugly. Part One: Don’t be a chump. Go to class. Do your work. Read your books. No seriously. Go. To. Class. Wherever possible you want to make it so that your student number and the case history and results it represents can be minced through the jaws of the administrative beast without anyone having to have pay any attention to it at all. As long as your case is routine, you’re safe. The second your case, your story or your issue requires attention from a human being you risk being sucked into a doom filled soul destroying swirling vortex of bureaucracy that would make Kafka goggle. The message here is that wherever possible, avoid finding yourself in need of the appeal process. The single best way to not end up frustrated with the processes designed to protect you is that you don’t have to have contact with them. Got that? Part Two: Document Everything. In the event you feel your marks have been unfair, ill considered or overly harsh, the appeal process begins. It’s important that from the moment you submit your appeal, you document every conversation that you have about it, no matter the medium. Taking the names of the people who give you advice, keeping copies of your emails and taking notes during phone calls are all steps towards having a complete and accurate account of what’s happened during your appeal process. The appeal process is fallible; people can give you conflicting advice or advice that is just plain wrong, they can misplace your appeal, and they can tell you to contact people who can’t help you. If anything like that should happen to PAGE 4 8

you, having names, dates and details means you can find out who was responsible for the error, and most importantly, prove it wasn’t you. Part Three: Know the Rules This doesn’t just mean know the rules about your unit, the deadlines for assessments and the requirements for successful completion of your course. This means knowing the rules for the appeal process itself. There are strict ways that appeals can be processed, and ideally you know those rules before you have to use them. You can find those rules online in your faculty’s section on “forms and procedures”, and the SRC has excellent case workers who can help you identify and follow those rules so your appeal has maximum clout. Part Four: Make like Peter Gabriel and don’t give up. There was a Rottweiler in Sweden who bit a policewoman and the worst part about it was it didn’t let go of her after it had bitten her it just swung off her until it was pulled off. You want to make that Rottweiler look like Pollyanna. It’s the nature of the appeals process that it involves several levels of authority. You’ll probably have to involve your tutor, unit co-ordinator, possibly an examiner’s committee inside the department, the head of the department, the faculty, and if you’re unhappy with those outcomes, the academic board. The inevitable consequence of having so many people involved in one process is that when trying to lodge your appeal or find out how (or if) it’s progressed, you may find yourself bounced from one authority to another. This bouncing will cost you time, patience, and unless remedied by beer, your soul and sanity. It’s difficult to get an accurate estimate of how long these processes will take, and you can find yourself explaining the same thing to different people over and over again. It can be easy in the face of delays to get impatient and give up; but if you don’t check your appeal has been properly received and processed, no-one else will. The ability to appeal your marks is immensely valuable. It’s an important tool. Just make sure you know how to use it.

Eleanor Gordon-Smith

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You should be really pleased The University of Sydney is many things to many people. To some, it will be the launching pad for stellar careers; to others it might be that sandstone labyrinth they attended for a few months before dropping out. But to many of the most important people who walk the campus, it is their workplace. On November 21st 2011, management informed representatives of the National Tertiary Education Union that the dismissal of 340 staff would be finalised by February. The kneejerk reaction to the word ‘cuts‘ tends to undervalue the magnitude of this announcement. Whilst the plan is plainly offensive to both students and staff, the actual implementation as well as impact is set to be even more ridiculous. Of the 340 to be dismissed, 150 will be academic staff, including anyone who is employed in a teaching capacity at the university. The Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence, in his video message, proclaimed that the staff targeted for dismissal are those who are ‘not pulling their weight‘. According to the process, any academics who have produced less than four published works during the past two years are eligible for dismissal. This performance criterion is absurd for several reasons: 1. It contradicts the University‘s own definition of ‘research active‘, which depends upon the quality of research output, rather than quantity. Staff who have published one or two transformative works in their fields can be dismissed whilst others who have their name in print four times are safe. 2. It is legally dubious. The contracts under which many staff work cannot be terminated according to this performance criterion. The NTEU describes the plan as having ‘arbitrary, retrospective and crude judgments around performance.‘ 3. Due to staff cuts in many faculties over recent years, many academics are now charged with the fulfilment of more duties at the University, eroding their capacity for research. The University can‘t accuse staff of ‘not pulling their weight‘ whilst simultaneously giving them more weight to pull. The reason behind the announcement is ultimately predictable, and reflective of a worrying managerial culture that has eclipsed all other goals and ideals of the university. The cuts will save money. To be precise, the cuts will represent a saving of 7.5% in budgeted salaries for 2012. These funds will then be spent on fifty three million dollars worth of infrastructure works that ‘must take place now‘, according to the VC. Whilst we acknowledge that infrastructure and ICT systems are in need of serious attention, we fervently reject the notion that staff cuts are a necessary or desirable step to bring about that change. The University argues that these infrastructure improvements, in conjunction with lower than expected fee revenue, justifies the proposal. Fee revenue is lower than

David Pink and Sam Farrell

expected due to a decrease in the number of International Students enrolling at USYD, prohibiting management from charging extortionate amounts to yet more students. The most important aspect of a diminishing International Student base is that the drop is temporary. On this basis, such redundancies would mean a permanent drop in the number of teaching staff, which would outlast the temporary fall in revenue. While the University has a large operating surplus, it is important to clarify that this is distinct from a discretionary profit. Much of the surplus as it stands is tied to Commonwealth capital expenditure grants, which can only be spent on projects mandated by the Government. This money cannot be diverted to staff salaries - the grants are set to expire, and it is not in the university‘s interest to let this happen. Still, some of the un-tied funds under the University‘s control are being wasted on projects that it would be bizarre to consider ‘urgent infrastructure works’. The obscenely wealthy Business School, for example, will receive a new eight-storey building this year. The University is also planning to acquire the operating management of University of Sydney Union commercial outlets in 2012. There is no evidence that this blow to student organization on campus was either urgent or necessary. The takeover of Manning bar alone will cost twenty to thirty million dollars. In plain terms, Senate and the Senior Executive Group have prioritized the erosion of student autonomy and experience over the retention of a valuable and enriched learning environment. Another work set to be fed by the salary savings is the construction of a new swimming pool on Abercrombie Street. Yes, a swimming pool. While the improvement of infrastructure is hardly objectionable in and of itself (although the classification of a swimming pool as ‘infrastructure‘ is dubious), if University management expect students to believe that it should be valued over the provision of a quality education, then they must be clinically insane. Following the recommendations of the Bradley Review into Higher Education, in 2012 student places will be deregulated (or ‘uncapped’) for the first time, meaning that the university will be allowed to enrol as many students as they choose. In this context, job cuts will mean less staff for more students, with immediate consequences for the quality of teaching and learning. There will inevitably be fewer tutorials, more crowded lecture theatres, longer queues across the university and a poorer student experience. The University claims to value research output. If it burdens the remaining academic staff with higher workloads, then staff capacity for research will be diminished, not enhanced. Quality of education will be diminished, not enhanced. Less staff for more students? We are not really pleased. We are incensed.

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Free Education 1. Education is a right, not a privilege The United Nations say that all people should have access to education (primary, secondary and tertiary) that is not based on economic ability to pay. Who argues with the UN?!

2. If it’s free, everyone can access it no matter their background or income Free education in Australia in the 1970s meant that a whole generation of Australians were able to go to university, TAFEs and teaching colleges, who previously couldn’t aﬀord it. Higher education became accessible to everyone, not just those who came from wealthy families.

3. Fully government-supported education systems are not hugely expensive If everyone on a collective basis contributes, it’s actually cheaper overall. There’s less of an emphasis on the individual to pay a sum and more about dividing it evenly over a larger group of people, so that everyone can access it (not just the people who paid for it.). If it cost $5 billion per year to educate 1 million students (international and domestic) ad that was spread over 3 million taxpayers, that’s not even $2,000 per taxpayer, and it doesn’t include the fact we have a progressive system so many people would pay a lot less and some a lot more. Or if you increase the company tax by 1%, that would more than cover the cost of free tertiary education per year.

health and welfare means there are fewer out-of-pocket expenses for individuals.

5. Free education is good for the economy Having a highly-skilled workforce is essential in keeping the economy strong and booming, particularly in times of recession. Having enough highly-trained graduates, tradespeople and general workers put back into the economy what the economy and the taxpayers have put into them.

6. Completely public universities are responsible to the whole society, not to private investors If universities are fully funded by the government and education is free universities don’t have to rely on private or income from students themselves. This means the universities are directly answerable to not only the government but to society itself – their loyalty is to the people, not to the private sector! Universities and higher education institutions are public, not private, places.

Free education is not only a right under the UN charter, it is also good for the economy. Jackpot!

4. Scandinavia does it the best! Countries like Norway and Sweden are renowned for being progressive in terms of education. Everyone is able to get a decent higher education with the result being a supportive society, legal system and community for all the people who live there. Paying more tax for society’s needs like education,

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7. Free education encourages people from ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds to seek higher skills training People in Australia who are from traditionally ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds have the opportunity and the support to change SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

that if education is free – there is no cost barring them from entering or participating in education and, consequently, in the workforce. Economic discrimination is always going to exist when individuals, not the government, have to pay for services.

8. Free education, fully subsidized by the government, respects staﬀ, teachers and academics A government that spends a decent percentage of their budget on free education says to society that it values education and that it’s a top priority. This means for the teachers, general staﬀ and academics that their professors are noticed, valued and supported by not just the government but by the public itself.

Some courses can cost up to $3000 per year on top of your crippling HECS debt. Education systems which are free let everyone have access to quality, not just those who can pay for the quality individually.

9. The quality of education is shared overall When individuals can pay more for a better education, society becomes a two-tiered system. It clearly divides those who can pay more for better services and those who can’t aﬀord to pay, and therefore entrenches discrimination, disadvantage and unfairness. Education systems which are free let everyone have access to quality, not just those who can pay for the quality individually.

10. No one wants a debt! If your education were free, you wouldn’t have a $30,000 HECS debt hanging over you when you ﬁnished university or TAFE. If your education were free, you wouldn’t have to borrow a loan from a bank to cover upfront fees. If education were free, you’d be able to start supporting a family or buying a house after leaving uni, instead of paying oﬀ a debt. This is also good in economic terms because you have graduates who are immediately putting money back in to the system.

Elly Howse S T U D EN T S R EPR E S EN TAT I V E CO U N C I L , U N I V ER S I T Y O F S Y D N E Y

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The student representative Network Ok, so we here at the SRC are all about repping for students. We think it’s seriously the best thing going around. Everyone knows that the SRC is here to represent you, and to lend a hand when necessary but what you may not know is that, for the previous two years, the Faculty of Arts has implemented, in conjunction with the SRC, a system of Student Representation at the Department level.

We think this programme has the capacity to greatly improve the way that student feedback and interests are communicated to academics across the University.

These Student Reps, elected every six months for yearlong terms, sit on the Board of the Department to provide student input and vote on your behalf. The board is the decisionmaking body in each department. They decide things like which Units of Study get cut and when, they answer grievances about particular academics, tutorial sizes or assessment regimes. Basically, it is the sort of board that any student who cares about the quality of their learning experience should hope engages with student opinion.

The role of the Student Reps is to liaise with the student body, primarily through online communications, to identify student opinion with respect to the Department and its administration. And then to raise it a meeting of the Department Board.

In 2011 and beyond the programme will continue to be expanded and improved. We’re aiming to implement SRNs for departments within the Faculties of Business, Education and Social Work and Science this year. So hopefully Student Representation will be coming to a Faculty near you!

If you are elected as a Student Representative, don’t worry – you will be given all the resources and information you need to make sure you are equipped for the role. And the education oﬃcers are always ready to help you (education. oﬃcers@src.usyd.edu.au).

As we continue to expand and improve the program in 2011, there will be more opportunities for students to step up and put themselves forward as candidates for Student Rep positions. We want more students to get on board so that student’s opinions are being heard where they need to be!

The Student Representative Network will, as it grows, become one of the most important channels through with students can voice dissatisfaction with their subjects. It is really important that you get the most out of your time at Uni. So get involved!

Getting angry education?

The SRN can only function with your feedback - make sure your opinion is heard!

Even though the program in 2010 was still in its pilot phase, there were some extremely positive results. Student representation in Philosophy and English was particularly strong with Departments very receptive to the issues raised by students. PAGE 52

about

your

The Education Action Group is the place to be! This is a collective run by the SRC to provide a forum for student feedback on educational issues. Meetings will be held weekly all year. If you are interested in getting involved, email us at education. ofﬁcers@src.usyd.edu.au

SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

The Students’ Representative Council (SRC) Legal Service has a solicitor on Darlington campus to provide free legal advice, representation in court and a referral service to undergraduate students at Sydney University. Knowing the law can be tough without getting some help first. If you would like legal advice, representation in court or simply need to know who to talk to, the SRC Legal Service can provide help free of charge. The SRC Legal Service solicitor can assist you with a wide range of legal issues such as:

• Family law (advice only) • Criminal law • Traffic offences • Insurance law • Domestic violence • Employment law • Credit & debt • Consumer complaints • Victims compensation • Discrimination and harassment • Tenancy law • Administrative law (government etc) • Immigration advice (one session only) • University complaints • Other general complaints Note: The solicitor cannot advise on immigration law but can refer you to migration agents and community centres.

Appointments Phone the SRC Office to make an appointment 9660 5222 Drop-in sessions Tuesdays & Thursdays 1pm-3pm (no need for an appointment) Location Level 1, Wentworth Building (under the footbridge on City Road) Darlington Campus NEED a Justice of the Peace? Here is a list of JP’s on campus: http://www.usyd.edu.au/staff/ directories/jps.shtml If you are a postgraduate student please contact SUPRA www.supra.usyd.edu.au or phone 02 9351 3715

For Family Law and Property Relationships Act matters we can refer you to solicitors who charge at a fair rate. The SRC’s operational costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney.

S T U D EN T S R EPR E S EN TAT I V E CO U N C I L , U N I V ER S I T Y O F S Y D N E Y

Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney Level 1 Wentworth Building, Uni of Sydney 02 9660 5222 | www.src.usyd.edu.au

ACN 146 653 143

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don’t pay full price for textbooks

go to SRC books

• We buy & sell textbooks according to demand • You can sell your books on consignment. Please phone us before bringing in your books. • We are open to USYD students & the public NEW Location! Level 4, Wentworth Building (Next to the International Lounge) Hours: Mondays to Fridays 9am - 4.30pm Phone: (02) 9660 4756 Email: books@SRC.usyd.edu.au

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Level 4

Wentworth

Search for text books online www.src.usyd.edu.au/default.php Call 02 9660 4756 to check availability and reserve a book.

SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

Gratitude Phoebe

Giant umbrellas

Dee

Uni Bros Kebabs

Amanda

Mika

Tina

Bombay Sapphire

Mika

Miley Cyrus

Subway smoothies

Justin Bieber

Mika

Honi team

Max

Rose

The sexy new Macs

Eagle Boys

Hackshirts

Nick

Vivian

Karen and Lewis

Junk in the OB room

The Gingerbread House Grace Kelly

Izzy

Coca-Cola

Eleanor

YouTube

Tim

Fist Shakes THE APOSTROPHE KEY. WHY DONT YOU WORK? I MEAN DONT. I MEAN...#fuckit SRC server interruptions Petrol prices Those who didn’t complete the survey Those who completed the survey but didn‘t completely complete the survey Fatigue Possums The dungeon

S T U D EN T S R EPR E S EN TAT I V E CO U N C I L , U N I V ER S I T Y O F S Y D N E Y

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Who is Michael Spence? A curious fellow who doesn’t entirely seem genuine. Vice Chancellor? I never hear from the Chancellor herself. I wonder what she’s doing. God only knows!

A man whose tears cure cancer. Shame he has never cried.

Not quite the DILF that I imagined him to be. So disillusioned.

Count Dracula

Vicious Catkiller

Vocational Cock.

http://gobarbra.com/hit/new-c82c52a49dd5958179dc0d68fd17bced

no idea. hasnt made himself known to me. wonder if hes important.

An ornithologist.

possibly Emperor Palpatine in disguise.

The Viet Cong.

He ran the Voice ticket for SRC

a modern day voldemort

Princess Di’s dad

Lady Dianna’s cousin?

Der Fuhrer.

that is the same as me asking you: Who is Trott Barton?’ I don’t see any relevance to that question. Ohhhh wait, he might be the dude who’s running right?

Photo by Eleanor Gordon-Smith

Underling to Marie Bashir, she’s the real union bashing, cost cutting overlord.

A union destroying demon sent to rid the world of fun and tomfoolery

Justin Bieber’s babysitter?

hurr derp derp

PAGE 56

Pom. (stop the boats?)

Isn’t he running for union board next year?

the pivot upon which the rusty blade of capitalism rotates, hacking the workers at the shins, transfering liver blackening infection along the way. SRC COU N T E R COU R SE H A N D BO O K 2 012

SEE us a t the SRC O-WEEK STALL www.src.

usyd.edu

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textbooks The University of Sydney Studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Representative Council acknowledges the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t pay full price for textbooks... buyour them at SRC We pay respects tobooks. Elders both pastBuilding and(Next present. Level 4, Wentworth to the International Lounge)

CHEAP!

Hours: Mondays to Fridays 9am - 4.30pm Phone: (02) 9660 4756 Email: books@SRC.usyd.edu.au Search for text books online: www.src.usyd.edu.au/default.php Call 02 9660 4756 to check availability and reserve a book.

Students Representative Council University of Sydney

STudents’

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UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS Support & Advocacy

Free Legal Advice

• Referrals • Discrimination & Equal Opportunity • Employment law • Minor criminal matters/traffic offences/ fines • Victims of violence • Debts

SRC Books - Buy your textbooks cheap! • Buy & sell your textbooks • Search for books online SRC website Wentworth Level 4 (next to the International Lounge)

Emergency Loans

$50 emergency loans for students in need

Student Publications

• Honi Soit weekly newspaper www.src.usyd.edu.au/honisoit • International Students Handbook • Orientation Handbook • Counter Course Handbook • Growing Strong - Women’s Handbook

Student Rights & Representation

SRC Representatives are directly elected by students each year to stand up for students’ rights on campus and in the wider community.

Find the SRC at...

The SRC’s operational costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney.

Level 1 Wentworth Building (under City Rd footbridge) Ph: 02 9660 5222 www.src.usyd.edu.au If you are at another campus, email: help@src.usyd.edu.au

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