I started studying at UTS in 2016, enrolled in a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) and a Bachelor of International Studies. I withdrew from a Bachelor of International Studies and now, I just do a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism).
Bachelor of Communications: 2016 is the first year that this course is offered as a Bachelor of Communications and not a Bachelor of Arts (Communications). This means that the second major is an option! Through UAC, you apply for one major (that’s the thing in brackets after Communications). If you choose to enter the second major, you first have to obtain a GPA of 3.5 or higher in your first year.
The course structure for the first year involves doing three subjects per semester: core communications, your major, and a stream choice elective.
Core communications: In the first semester this was Citizenship and Communication and in second semester this was Digital Literacy (the first time this subject has run). Core communications is completed by every comms student – no matter if you’re a journalism student or creative writing student. It’s about the way we communicate. To me, it’s kind of a bit of an airy subject, but it’s a nice break from the other tricky stuff. Airey doesn’t mean easy – airy means broad, in this sense.
Your major: My major is Journalism so I studied the subject Stories from the Streets in semester one and Live Action: Multiplatform Journalism in semester two. This is the foundations for beginning the study into your major.
Stream choice elective: This is probably not the elective you’re thinking of, where you get to choose something quite abstract. This is about choosing a subject from another major – Media and Arts Production, Creative Writing, Social and Political Science, whatever. So you choose a subject from one of those streams. The purpose is twofold. This allows you to get skilled up in another area of Communications, but it also gives you a taste of what you’d like your second major to be, if you wish to do one. I believe that your stream choice elective is supposed to be your second major if you choose to do one, but I'm not 100% sure. I'm arguing with the student centre about that right now. Later on, you get to choose an elective – it might be transnational media, or sex and power, for example.
Journalism: Journalism is my major and I’m happy to report I made a good decision in choosing it. The first semester is pretty intense, it’s an introverts biggest challenge. You have to interview people from your own area, as well as areas you’ve never been to. I mean, I expected this of the course because I knew Journalism was really hands on at UTS so I was prepared. But many students who have friends who study Journalism at other Unis weren’t so sure about it all, they were expecting to study the theory and history of Journalism, perhaps. Nonetheless, everyone who got through the semester said it was one of the best experiences of their lives and they can’t wait to keep going. We had guest lecturers nearly every week, like the Editor of Huffington Post Australia or the boss at BuzzFeed Australia. On one of my assignments, I met Professor Gillian Triggs, the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission (career goal: unlocked). In all, it was a really great subject. In second semester we did Live Action: Multiplatform Journalism. That was so good. I LOVED IT. It was about the way we use several different platforms to convey meaning. I never thought I’d be using garage band to make a podcast, or iMovie to clip together something I filmed and created. A total noob like me is happy to report back that it pushed me to be more digitally literate than I thought I was. Our final assignment for the year was to create a website, with two social media platforms, and several stories of different formats – all within a theme of our choice. It was a great assignment.
Social and Political Science: I studied this as my stream choice elective in semester 1 and 2. In semester one, the subject is called Self and Society, and in semester two, it is Politics, Ideologies and Beliefs. The first semester is about identifying various social concepts and forces: gender, race, ethnicity, sex, standpoint theory, so on. It was a really interesting semester. The major assignment was to interview someone older than you (I chose my nana) and then transcribe the interview, and then do a proper analysis of their life according to the various ways they’ve been socially conditioned. In semester two, you look at the ideas of neoliberalism, conservativism, Marxism, environmentalism, etc, etc. For this major assignment, I spent time with an organisation (you could choose any kind of organisation – political, NGO, grass roots, etc) and then analysed exactly how they respond to various social and political ideologies.
The purpose of Social and Political Science is essentially to prepare you for a career or further studies in research. It is very research based, and you do these exercises of research and analysis because they prepare you perfectly for further social or anthropic study.
International Studies: International Studies compliments a Communications degree by adding two years to the degree’s length. In your fourth year of study – you’ll study abroad for a year. You don’t do any kind of International Studies subjects in your first year – that begins in your second year. You do decide on your country of study and language you wish to study in your first year, but otherwise, nothing happens until your second year.
I enrolled in this and then withdrew. Simply, I started interning at Cosmopolitan Magazine. I realised so quickly that I can’t wait to get into the industry. An extra two years on my degree? It sounded unappealing, especially when I knew I could do a global exchange instead for six months, without adding time to my degree.
Exchange: On that note, I’m going on exchange next year! I’m going to Venice to live for about 5 months, I’ll study at Ca Foscari (University). Do I speak Italian? Hell no. Am I going to learn it asap? Yes. I’ll start next week. I promise. UTS has a wonderful exchange program – they have so many partner Universities in all corners of the world and they have lots of different scholarships set up (some scholarships pretty well pay for your entire exchange – depending on where you go). The University assists with receiving government loans to make the exchange really accessible to a lot of students.
I’m slowly wading through a lot of paper work, I’ve just submitted the subjects I want to study next year. I’ve applied for accommodation too! Yipppeeee. I’ve applied to study either English language (fine phonetics, grammar, etc) or Venetian culture – so we’ll see how we go!
Trimesters: There’s a lot of talk about trimesters at UTS. I’m not well versed in it all because it hardly affects me at all, so I’ll kind of just give an outline of what it means to me. Essentially, most Universities do two semesters, of about 15 weeks each (give or take for exam period). UTS has entered their first year of trimesters. The third trimester, I believe, is optional, and is a way of accelerating your degree rather than compulsory to complete it. In turn, the study periods are shorter. Communications isn’t offered in trimesters yet, so I just do two semesters that are 11 weeks long. A lot of people have strong feels about this, because it’s less face-to-face teaching time. I won’t lie, I have no feelings about it, I don’t care. I’m just happy that I spend less time at Uni (I commute 3 hours each time I go to Uni). If I had the longer semester, I wouldn’t have been able to accept a two-week job at Cosmopolitan. The less time at Uni, the more time for work experience, paid work, travel, and interning. Although, it does make it more stressful towards the end of the semester. The way I see it is, nothing will ever be as hard as the HSC. So, trimesters don’t bother me too much but if it is something to be a make or break for you, you should definitely look into it.
Oh, no exams! If you study Communications at UTS…you have no exams. Think about that: The HSC exams could be your last exams, EVER.
What’s the campus feel? It’s great, I enjoy it. There are numerous places to sit and study quietly or socially, and there’s always somewhere to charge your phone. I don’t get lost – at all. I know it’s a concern of a lot of people, but I guarantee I was more scared entering Year 7 that I’d get lost, rather than University. Get the Lost on Campus app, you’ll be right.
Otherwise, I love the Uni’s campus. So close to China town, such a close walk from Central Station, so many good places to eat, great coffee…the essentials.
What’s the food like? Great. China town is so close that Chinese restaurants spill into the UTS area. On campus there are all kinds of food outlets, sushi, Indian, Chinese, burgers, Mexican, salad bars, cafes, you name it. The best value for money meal? $5 pides from the Kebab shop in the Underground. Amazing. HSPs are also good there.
Overall: I really like UTS, I’m proud of it. I love the Uni, I love the vibes, I love my course, and all of the above. There are lots of societies to be involved with, and admittedly I’m not involved enough. This is purely because I live so far away that I usually miss meetings to save the commute. But, I’m always welcome!
Edit: I didn't mention earlier that the internship/work experience opportunities are huge. Not only can you participate within opportunities within the Uni, but about 2, sometimes 3 or more, times per week, we get emails from the Head of Journalism with all kinds of work experience opportunities. I know that this happens in all the majors, although I can't imagine it happening much more than what it does in Journalism, because it happens A LOT in Journalism!
Home
Help
Search
Login
Topic: What it's like studying Communications at UTS (Read 20702 times)