General Education
**EDIT — as of 2019, the General Education paper is taken in first semester. Back when I did Biomed, it was in second semester. This means that some of the typical gen-eds biomedders would take, will no longer be available. However, in choosing a gen-ed I would recommend seeing how much assessment is involved, and go on the Student Course Review website to check out the reviews for the papers! You are going to be doing three core papers in first semester, so you want a gen-ed that is relatively easy and stress-free!**
In second semester, you can choose a gen-ed. This is a paper that is outside the faculty that you’re studying in.
So what makes a good gen-ed?
One that does not require a lot of time or work and is relatively easy to get a good grade in. You want to feel like you are only taking three subjects in second semester.
What are some common gen-eds for biommeders to take?
Most people seem to either take Philosophy or International Business. Both of these seem to be very safe bets.
I didn’t take either of these gen-eds, and I think I made some of these people jealous with the lack of effort I had to put into mine.
There are two schedules/lists that you (as a Biomed or HealthSci student) can choose your gen-ed from:
- the Open Schedule (see here)
- the Engineering, Medical and Health Sciences, Science Schedule (see here)
YOUTHWRK152G
This course isn’t particularly mentally stimulating, but I hardly spent any time on it and managed to get my best grade for the entire year in it.
In this course you learn about problems facing the youth of today (but not how to help youth through it). There was one two-hour lecture per week and a one hour tutorial every week. I smashed this all out on a Monday morning from 9–12.
Assessment
In the first couple weeks of the course, you have to read four news articles on youth in the media and then write some 150 word summaries for each. Handing this in on time (no matter how good it is) is worth 5% towards your final grade.
In the couple weeks after that, you write the first half of your report (some of which is just your article summaries from above). Handing this in on time (no matter how good it is) is worth another 5% towards your final grade.
After that, you write the second half of your report. You hand this in and no matter how good it is, you get another 5% towards your grade.
Then you will have a week or two to put all three of these tasks together and edit them till you are happy with your full report. You hand your report in (this is when how good it is actually matters), and this is worth a maximum of 35%.
This means ONE REPORT IS WORTH 50% OF YOUR GRADE.
The final 50% of your grade is from the final exam, which is marked out of 50. 10 marks is for an essay question and 40 for short answers.
In the final review lecture before the exam, the lecturers told us the topics of the two essay questions we could choose between — meaning we knew exactly what we were going to be writing in the essay.
Often in final lectures, lecturers go “What do you need to know for the final exam?” and then they will put up every single learning objective from the entire course and be like “ALL THIS!!” and they think they are hilarious. So when this lecturer said the same question, I inwardly rolled my eyes.
BUT
He had one slide for each lecture, with all the learning objectives on it….he then proceeded to delete all the learning objectives that we didn’t need to focus on, leaving only the one’s that were actually going to be tested. So, I was able to find all the notes that were relevant to the exam and make a short document of all the notes that I needed — whilst disregarding the rest. It was amazing. It required such little study time and resulted in a really nice grade at the end of it.
Seriously, what more could you ask for in a gen-ed????
Anyway, obviously I am slightly biased, but Youthwork is such a good gen-ed to take. I can’t tell you about the other gen-eds that people take, but if you ask around I am sure you could get a pretty good idea of which one you wanted to take.
Happy choosing!
