EWEKNEE1101: Choosing Units: Don't Bother With These Ones.

Now that I’m nearing the end of my undergrad degree (I sat my last UWA exam on Friday. It didn’t go well) I thought I would give a review of some of the more terrible units I have taken. Any degree has those classes that can only be described as a Complete Waste of Time and my Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Psychology) is no exception.

Like most freshers, I was super excited to start university thinking I would become some kind of old-school-70’s hippy, involved in the all the most important protests (I’ve still never been to one) and was beyond motivated to become the Greatest Psychologist Ever; curing the world one case of Depression at a time. I soon learned that uni is a lot like school except you can wear whatever you want, its somewhat acceptable to turn up drunk to tutes and you’ll spend more time eating your body weight in wedges on Oak Lawn (because you can’t be bothered trekking to Broadway even though you’re craving Ararat/Nagano) than learning anything of any real world value.

I was also pretty excited to be doing an Arts degree. I didn't have any compulsory 8am maths classes like my friends in Science, I had about fourteen contact hours, half of which I miiiiiight turn up to and I could write most of my essays with minimal research due to the great art of Bullshitting. I had some great arts units that I loved and was actually inspired by but I also had some doozies.

First Year Philosophy

My tutor looked like Steve Carrell which was very distracting. Unfortunately he wasn’t Steve Carrell and also wasn’t funny. He was a bit of a dick actually and made everyone print out every week’s readings even though they were an average of 75 pages long. The only things I can remember from Philosophy are Plato’s Cave Allegory, Freud is a sexist dick, Sartre is cool and that I’m still not convinced that the mind and the brain are separate entities despite the Philosophy Freak’s (you know, the one who always sits closest to the tutor) best efforts to suggest otherwise. UWA ruined philosophy for me.

Any Anthropology

I don’t understand why anyone would major in anthropology. It’s supposedly the study of cultures and human interactions which sounds pretty awesome to a Psych major, but it really blows. Although, I did write an awesome essay on polygamy. I watched a whole lot of Big Love, got my feminist on and received a High Distinction.

Half way through second year I got fed up with the Dud Arts subjects I’d chosen and was looking forward to the major end of my degree when I would study only Psychology units. But this wasn’t all that great either.

PSYC2217: Cognitive Neuroscience

This unit involved a group project on something that I obviously didn’t learn much about because I can’t remember what it was. Something to do with, ugh, the brain. I was a third year, and I had two second years and third year mature age student in my group. The second years weren’t too bad except that I had to explain simple stats analysis to them and the mature age student was completely useless because she was a mature age student. From the country. The exam contained 20 multiple choice questions from the possible 250 practice questions in the text book. The book was way more complicated than the lecture material and I didn’t have time/the motivation to read and understand all 15 examinable chapters so I printed out the 250 multiple choice questions and memorised the answers. A valuable learning experience.

PSYC3303: Psychological Science in the Modern World: Challenges and Controversies

This should be a first year unit. Carmen Lawrence was the co-ordinator which I was initially really excited about (even made a status update about it!) but I soon realised she is balls. I summarised this unit in my first post.

By far my favourite Complete Waste of Time Unit was:

VISA2218: Art Backwards: Painting into Film

I resent having to eventually pay for this unit. It was about what it means if the back of a painting was featured in a painting. As in, if I’m sitting opposite you and you’re doing a painting so I can see the back of your easel; what does it mean about the painting and about me as the artist, if I paint the back of your easel in my painting. We also spent about half the semester staring at and analysing this painting:

I can’t remember why this one was so important. Something to do with people in the mirror and the man in the doorway at the back. And the back of the painting on the left.

I don’t think the lecturer knew what it meant as he brought up more and more ridiculous theories every week (none of which really made much sense). He also wore t-shirts that had slogans that were way too young for him, with his ginourmous hairy gut hanging out underneath and mispronounced my surname (it’s fucking easy to say/a common food stuff). From what I gathered, it might possibly mean that the artist is gay (but probably not) or it could signify some kind of internal reflection or wank wank whatever. Most likely though, it means that the artist did a painting of someone else doing a painting.