It’s been two weeks since I was offered a place in the course I wanted, Arts (Global) at Monash. I’ve almost completed the enrolment process now, including unit enrolment and student IDs. And by the way, Monash has to be the laziest university about putting together student IDs — they don’t take photos for it properly; for mine the guy at the counter pointed at his webcam and said, “Taking your photo now.” I look like I am a ghost, that’s how white my face is, my head is in the bottom-right corner of the photo, and I have a RUBBISH BIN in the background. Furthermore, this is my student ID for the next five years. Yippee!

Anyway, I was going to write a post about the subjects I was doing, but then I realised it wouldn’t be very interesting. I mean, I think it’s interesting, but my readers number more than just me, so I thought I’d just list them briefly and link to unit outlines for the über-curious. For the curious, the subjects I’m doing are:

First Semester

  • international studies/history: major world events of the twentieth century (INT1010)
  • history: “the long nineteenth century”, or 1789-1914 (HSY1111)
  • introduction to linguistics (LIN1010)
  • Spanish 1 (SPN1010)

Second Semester

  • international studies/history: major issues facing the modern world (INT1020)
  • history: wars and revolutions in the twentieth century (HSY1112)
  • introduction to linguistics terminology (LIN1020)
  • Spanish 2 (SPN1020)

I am contemplating replacing the second-semester history unit with something else, because it is highly probable that there will be overlap between “wars and revolutions of the twentieth century” and “major world events of the twentieth century”. It depends how large that overlap is, though. I don’t want to study the same thing twice, but judging by the unit descriptions they’re not exactly the same thing, because the history units (both HSY1111 and HSY1112, really, but especially the latter) focus on social revolutions and INT1010 looks like it’s more about politics. For instance, HSY1112 seems to gloss over communism almost completely, and INT1010 doesn’t. HSY1112 focuses on stuff like Nazi Germany, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and the civil rights movement, which isn’t covered by INT1010 I don’t think. So, if they do focus on different aspects of the twentieth century, I won’t switch HSY1112 for something else. However, I am clearly going to be a twentieth-century expert by the time I’ve emerged from this year of university.

I probably won’t study much history after first-year anyway — I’m allowed to study exactly one history unit as an elective for my major1 (but, again, it has to be twentieth-century history), and I can study history while I’m on exchange overseas, but that’ll be it. I have to take two “global research” units — one second-year, one third — that will occupy the spaces I would otherwise study history. So studying as much as I can first year might be a good idea.

  1. I can technically study two — the requirements for an IS major are the first year sequence, four later-year core units, and two electives. However, I don’t think Monash will let me count my units taken overseas as core units, so that leaves me one elective.