The University Thread - Exams YEAH! Life after uni?

[Harman]

Three exams done Two more to do next week

[Mini E]

One exam tomorrow.. then no deadlines/exams/presentations for 5 weeks

[Red]

Decided to chuck some more money at the OU and do three more modules. Done one (Heritage, Whose Heritage?) which was nice and short at 15 credits, going to do Archaeology: The Science of Investigation (10 credits), Making Sense of Material Culture (30 credits - bit pointless really considering that was what my degree involved but it'll look pretty on my CV) and a non-credit bearing course on the Nebamun Wall Paintings, which gets you a nice certificate from the British Museum.

Just trying to keep sane while doing my day job really, not aiming for any sort of qualification as I already have a degree in Ancient History, but I don't want to get swallowed up by the pharmaceutical industry and forget what I really like doing. And fees are going up so I need to get in there before September or I'll not be able to afford anything again.

[BTB]

Timetable for this semester...

I'm in two days a week with an average of four hours, earliest start is 11... I'm going to be so ready for the working world

[Harman]

Finished my exams

[Exxy]

I applied for University today!

Where did you apply to mate?

De Montfort
Lincoln
Sheffield Hallam
Edge Hill
Southampton Solent

Only really planning on going to DMU and Lincoln, if I don't get in there, I'll have to think about what to do then.

GOOD NEWS: I got an offer from DMU
BAD NEWS: I don't think I'll get in. It's 300 points. I can get 280 (BBC) max excluding the ucas points from an AS I'm doing at the moment. It doesn't look like they're accepting AS grades but if they are, I'll get 300 hopefully. Anyone fancy helping me out?

This offer is subject to you obtaining
A minimum of 300 UCAS Tariff points
from at least 2 GCE A levels or AVCEs
including

GCE A level
Grades BB

Might shoot them an e-mail to check. Was going to send them my portfolio anyway. I'm doubtful they will accept AS grades though.

[man-eater chimp]

I'm waiting on one uni still from my UCAS (I sent mine in at the start of November I think).

[Igor]

I keep thinking up courses that I think I'd prefer/be better off doing over the one that I'm doing now. I'm not sure why. Right now, I think I'd be better off doing Architectural Engineering (International) MEng. Despite knowing nothing about architecture or engineering. And hating maths.

[Green Gecko]

I've transcribed about 9,000 words for just 5 out of 9 tutorials for my last project, so that my tutors can't strawberry float me over by randomly complaining in the assessment feedback (so you have no chance of correcting it) about how I didn't make my own strawberry floating artwork in a way they would do it. For my 1st out of 2 30 credit major final project units I've actually taken on board almost all of their feedback. Having a black and white record of what they said to me, and it being evident in my project that I carried out their recommendation, should save me from that bullshit.

That's more than the minimum dissertation word count for my BA, and I've only written a 450 word introduction for that so far.

I will get a first though because my essays are amaze. I got 75% for a formal analysis of cityscapes and representation of cyberspace in Blade Runner and Ghost In the Shell, strawberry floating cool topic really. The next essay was a fine art one which I wasn't quite as sure footed in (I don't really know why I produce sound installations in a fine art context but my best theory is in film ) but I still managed 70% despite dictating most the essay in one 45 minute recording and working on that document for just a week.

I don't know how the strawberry float I would manage if I couldn't belt out decent theory work, given the sheer motivational effort I'm having to put myself through to build installations/sculpture every day all semester. Collating documentation (about 900 RAW photos for this, maybe a hundred audio recordings many hours long, and over 2 hours of HD video footage) for an extensive practical coursework is a strawberry floating nightmare, especially when they want it all printed and filmed onto DVD, at least if you want them to actually bother looking at half your work.

Never EVER EVER try to use Adobe Encore to put together a rough cut clip DVD using HD Motion JPEG files and Mother of God you'd be better hanging yourself than expecting to throw your 3GP mobile videos into the mix. I've spent almost 2 weeks just getting my footage into a format my tutors can be bothered to look at (one of them can't even work out how to open a video file in VLC player) because of a hellish degree of program crashes, random infinite program error loops, running out of hard disk space, waiting 2 hours for one MPEG-2 to encode despite running on a 2.66Ghz Core i7 and then realising everything always strawberry floating defaults to NTSC video standard instead of PAL so there's a chance it might not work on whatever random POS DVD player the staff spend 5 minutes working out how to turn on. Now I'm using Final Cut Pro I'm okay but strawberry float strawberry float strawberry float, I'm not actually producing any work, I'm just making it presentable for assessment.

Science/maths grads (with all due respect since audio engineering and programming all come into my work) who think art degrees are a doss can get strawberry floated.

Also my girlfriend has gone on a street photography trip to Berlin for a week. While it's true you're more likely to get laid at an art school, your productivity plummets when you suddenly can't, otherwise I'd be in bed by now.

[kiera229]

Right now, I think I'd be better off doing Architectural Engineering (International) MEng. Despite knowing nothing about architecture or engineering. And hating maths.

I don't recommend taking a physics course if you hate maths. One of my brothers tried that. It didn't end well.

9 days until I defend my thesis, and my presentation is pretty much under control. Went through a practice run with my supervisor yesterday, in a spare classroom with a projector, and that was okay. I have a full dress rehearsal in front of my lab group on Tuesday, then the real thing's the following Monday.

My supervisor was discussing my reviewers with me, and apparently I got one guy who knows our group's chemistry inside out and asks a lot of hard questions "because of his personality" :/ I guess I'm going to spend the next week reading a shitload of literature just to make sure I'm ready for anything.

In the meantime I'm applying to a summer programme in the States, and the application includes four essay questions. I hate application essays.

[emilythestrange]

Now I'm using Final Cut Pro I'm okay but strawberry float strawberry float strawberry float, I'm not actually producing any work, I'm just making it presentable for assessment.

Science/maths grads (with all due respect since audio engineering and programming all come into my work) who think art degrees are a doss can get strawberry floated.

I had similar problems towards the end of my degree, actually choosing to wrap up specific pieces of work is something I should've done sooner, I was right up to the limit rendering, copying around videos and images onto disc, changing formats, testing them, it takes so long to actually get your work in the right format and ready for submission and I massively underestimated it.

Also remember many painful sagas with the university printers trying to print my dissertation... never again... and the cost of it and I know I didn't have the worst of it by a long shot compared to other art related degrees. To be honest I'm glad to see the end of it and be working full time now, to go home and chill out without worrying about the hundreds of other things that need doing.

And good luck Kiera

[Exxy]

Offers from my top two choices \o/

[That]

Offers from my top two choices \o/

Well in, dude! Where you off to?

[Green Gecko]

Even though I had the foresight to start preparing my dvd footage a week before the deadline, I never would have thought, or at least hoped it wouldn't, take twice as long thanks to some shitty software that can't handle HD footage in certain formats. Massive false economy scenario in this case.

Lesson is, never expect a program to function to any extent beyond what it is typically used for. I would have been much better off using a high end editor like fcp or even premier to sequence and then just transcode a handful of files ideas of hundreds. Instead I wasted hours arranging files in a timeline evidently not built to handle them at all.

I'm using DVD studio pro now. It's funny apple have EOLed final cut studio, since I'm never using encore again.

[Igor]

Right now, I think I'd be better off doing Architectural Engineering (International) MEng. Despite knowing nothing about architecture or engineering. And hating maths.

I don't recommend taking a physics course if you hate maths. One of my brothers tried that. It didn't end well.

Nah, I wouldn't. I just end up walking by various different departments as I wander through campus and think 'huh, what if I was doing that?'.. Then I can't help but think that I'd have better career options if I was doing this other, mythical course, and I end up hating myself.

[kiera229]

Nah, I wouldn't. I just end up walking by various different departments as I wander through campus and think 'huh, what if I was doing that?'.. Then I can't help but think that I'd have better career options if I was doing this other, mythical course, and I end up hating myself.

Well, most of us spend at least some part of our lives wondering about roads not taken. Hell, I'm still wondering where I could've been if I'd gone into more creative pursuits - I love writing and have been paid for freelance writing work, but only ever to supplement my "real" studies in science, and I still wish I had more time for it.

My advice is this: if there is something that you would genuinely, passionately rather be doing instead of what you're doing now, then go for it. But if you're looking around at other courses simply because you're not entirely convinced you're where you're supposed to be, well, there's no guarantee that whatever else you try won't feel equally unfulfilling. That same brother of mine spent over five years finishing what should have been a three-year course because he kept switching subjects, and even then he never found something he truly enjoyed. I kept telling him that at the very least he should focus on doing well at the course he was in, to get the degree out of the way and open some more doors for himself. In the end, he finished an undergrad degree in god-only-knows-what, and once that was out of the way he felt freer to look for something he'd like. (He ended up getting into a JD course and falling in love with law.)

There are a lot of employers these days that'll take people with all kinds of undergraduate qualifications and train them on the job. Again, unless you really feel passionate about one particular field, the best thing you can do for yourself is earn a qualification and use that to move forward in your life rather than wasting too much time jumping from course to course.

[Slartibartfast]

I keep thinking up courses that I think I'd prefer/be better off doing over the one that I'm doing now. I'm not sure why. Right now, I think I'd be better off doing Architectural Engineering (International) MEng. Despite knowing nothing about architecture or engineering. And hating maths.

Architectural Engineering is a very American degree which doesn't really (yet) have a place in the UK. It doesn't allow you to become an architect and depending where you go, may not allow you to be a Professional Engineer. It's mostly a civil engineering degree but replaces environment, water and infrastructure modules with building design and planning modules. So if you don't like maths, definitely avoid it.

I generally think it's best to stick the course, since your life is not at all decided by the degree you have, it's what you go into afterwards.

[Exxy]

Offers from my top two choices \o/

Well in, dude! Where you off to?

Cheers pal De Montfort or Lincoln to do Media Production hopefully. Given it a year of extra thought and gone to the open days and reckon it's the right course for me.

Got an Unconditional from Edge Hill today Pleased with that, probably put it as insurance with DMU or Lincoln above it.

[Green Gecko]

Unconditional offers are great, but don't let it make you slack on your final units, which is why my current uni tutor gave me a winky winky smily smily instead.

I still didn't finish my btec, but strawberry float it, I was overqualified, would have been better off doing art foundation and still got 10 out of 12 units.

When I showed up for enrolment I just tacitly pointed out I had more than enough ucas points from my a levels and key skills.

I actually got offered an extension until November or something to hand in the rest of my btec, after I had already begun work my degree

Of course that never happened.

Then I failed first year. Twice.

after 2 appealed terminations i finally got proper learning support for my 2nd year after, which I passed with 62 average. Just handed semester 4 practical. 4 years and I've finished 48%, seems absurd but I'm thankful I bought so much time to get up to scratch, as miserable add my life was leading up to recently.

because I'm actually strawberry floating pro and I know it. Will be interesting to see what I get for my best project so far, hopefully upper 60s.

[andretmzt]

Anyone seen these FB groups that popping up with university memes? Some are hilarious