What if Dr Seuss' Yertle had studied Engineering?

[Yertle the Turtle]

I will try to rewrite the original story through my own study. Had Yertle studied Engineering, his tall throne would never have been brought low by a simple design fault, such as a maximal load on a single point. Therefore, I will try to fill the deficit, to ensure that such a fall will not happen to me

Barring the faint possibility that I will not get an offer for a course where my basic ATAR (before additional subject aggregate points) is 2.5 above the clearly-in ATAR, I will be studying a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) at Monash University. Before you ask what branch, the main reason I chose Monash over RMIT was because of the "common first year" program that Monash has. In other words, all the branches of Engineering have a shared first year, where you all do the same core units before making a stream choice at the end of first year. At the moment there are a few streams I am focusing on: Chemical, Mechatronics, Electrical or Civil. We'll see throughout the year how the decision comes together. I don't really know which electives I'll do, but probably one Chemistry and one of something else. I was very happy to receive a Vice Chancellors Scholarship of Achievement, which was another reason to lean towards Monash, but luckily transport was also in my favour, as I can catch a bus  from outside my house straight to Monash. Getting a phone (my first, YAY) was a big step towards creating independence that I hope will be built even more by the coming Uni year.

At the moment I'm still feeling upset about my performance in VCE, so this coming year will be my opportunity to prove to myself that I can work, and do better than I did, so it will be a big year for me. I will try to keep this fairly well updated, which will be another challenge. So throughout this year, let's learn how Yertle should have built his throne!

[jazcstuart]

Ok I am sooo excited to read this journal, for a few reasons:

1. Your title made me literally laugh out loud. I love this Dr Suess story and I just found your comparison really funny and clever, so good job

2. I am also starting an engineering degree next this year so it will be interesting to read about your own experiences

3. I like the idea of the common first year, and will be interested to see which stream you end up following

And who knows, maybe you will end up using your extensive engineering knowledge to become Mack and save the world from tyrannical dictatorships instead?

[fantasticbeasts3]

Love the new uni journals coming through! Excited to read your updates -- hope everything goes well :-)

[Poet]

If Dr. Seuss' Yertle studied engineering, he'd want to get a job in the aeronautical industry. Wanting to be king of all he sees and all that.

I'm so excited to see this journal and you as a person develop throughout this next year and onwards. 💙💙

[Vaike]

Congrats on the scholarship! Definitely think it's a good idea to keep your options open, I've found a lot of first year students do this and are thankful they did! Excited to see how you find the experience and what you end up pursuing. With respect to electives, if you have any questions about first year science ones like chem or physics, just lemme know Best of luck!

[sarangiya]

Best of luck for Wednesday even though we all know you won't be needing it.
Congratulations on everything last year. I can't wait to see what you get up to this year and for the years to come!!
Best of luck!

[Yertle the Turtle]

Thanks for the encouragement, to all who have responded, hopefully I can make this journal worth reading... or maybe not.
Here we have some goals for the year:

2019 Goals

- Become more independent: Hopefully getting a phone, being an adult and going to uni can get this one started. I'm trying to learn responsibility and independence after 17 years of having approximately none.
- Become fitter: I'm intending to either get a part-time unskilled labour job or go to the gym this year, so hopefully I can get fitter, and stay motivated in it unlike last year... 
- Get a job: As said above, I'm hoping to find an unskilled labour job, but if that fails I'm also considering tutoring, though my scores don't really merit students. The 40 in Physics was good, but my other 40 is unlikely to get me any students. However, hopefully there can be some students who accept my explanation skills over the actual marks I got.
- Work up to my potential - maintain a WAM of 80+ (I don't know how hard this is, but we'll see how I go. 70+ may be more achievable)
- Gain some social experience: Get to know new people, learn how to start up a conversation, just overall improve my social lack-of-skills. Hopefully get to my first AN meetup...
-Get my P's
-Spend more down-time in art, instead of gaming...

As for my actual degree, I am currently experiencing technical difficulties enrolling in the course, as it requires MFA (multi-factor authentication), which means you need to have a phone that links you to your Monash account. This all needs to be done before 30th of Jan, which is the offer expiry date, and I get back and have phone access on Feb 3rd... So I've sent a message to the Monash service desk to ask for a temporary exemption (thanks @OptimistPrime), so hopefully I can continue the enrolment soon, and do that part later. As for the units I'm intending to do, at the moment they are as follows:

Units for first year

1st Semester
ENG1002
ENG1003
ENG1090
CHM1011

2nd Semester
ENG1001
ENG1005
ENG1060
CHM1022

At present the unit in italics is the one I'm least sure about. Even though I technically don't need to take Foundation Maths, I think that, given the way Spesh worked last year, it would be an advantage for me to take it, so it's in my list at present. I expect to do Chemistry 1, it's now just a question of whether I do Chem 2 and do a Chemistry minor over first and second year. I may, but I'm still considering my options. It is a little difficult choosing all these units when the things that you have to choose in school are far less varied, and therefore it's easier. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm very open to other people's input, as I really don't have any idea myself.

[Yertle the Turtle]

Currently this journal is on a temporary hold, as I'm still not enrolling properly, despite having sent about 6 emails to the Servicedesk. I did get a call saying they were about to set up a 24hour exemption from the 2FA for me, but it didn't seem to work, and given that I won't be available for contact tomorrow (taking the first step to coming home, yay!) I'm really not sure how this is going to work. I did send a suggestion that if they could give me a 1-2 week extension on the offer, so if that was possible, things should be fine. Anyway, hopefully getting back to Melbourne on Saturday, not looking forward to the warmth, but that's what comes of living in such an arid and hot place as Melbourne. Hope everyone else's enrolments are going better than mine!

[Yertle the Turtle]

Well, as of yesterday this journal is officially up and running again. Fully enrolled now, so pretty stoked about that. Timetable is up as well, and it's pretty terrible. Because of the late enrollment, all the preferences are already finished, so I just get the times that people won't like. This includes finishing at 8 once a week I think, and no one is going to want to swap into those times, so I guess I'm stuck with them because of stupid tech issues. I rang Monash Connect on Monday asking for help and they said the faculty would get in contact with me, but to get back to them on Friday if they didn't. So yesterday I did, and after nearly an hour on the phone I found that the faculty had reinstated my account, and had notified me. In an email. To my Monash email...  Anyway, the deadline for me to enroll before they would close down the account was... Friday. So I finished quickly. And now I'm in, so I'm happy. Further updates will follow.

[Yertle the Turtle]

Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 30 days.
Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.

sigh

I haven't posted here for a while, so here is the update. We are nearly 3 weeks into uni, and I'm starting to strongly regret not doing an apprenticeship instead of uni. Not that there is a problem with uni as such, but I'm just struggling with motivation and enjoyment of really boring tasks.

I will give a unit by unit breakdown below:

ENG1090: Boring, basically Specialist, and so far it has been all the tedious and difficult stuff, rather than the interesting and difficult stuff, so it's not interesting. The lecturer is also not exactly riveting, and that makes it worse, and one of my classes is at 8am, so all in all, it's my least favourite unit.

ENG1002: Probably my second favourite unit, so far it is all about Chemical Engineering, which I'm really interested in, and so far it has not disappointed. The subject is well taught and interesting, though the assignment is a massive Excel flowchart, with 16 different systems to calculate. However, the team is really nice, so it's not too bad.

ENG1003: I dislike coding, having so many people in the family talking about it non-stop as I grew up, so this unit is not very interesting for me. Most of it isn't too difficult, and again the team I have is nice (as far as I can tell after one meeting...), so I'm not too upset about this unit.

CHM1011: My favourite. I loved Chem in Year 12, so I'm happy to be continuing it in Uni. So far it isn't too hard, though all the lab work is difficult for someone who did close enough to no proper lab stuff in VCE. However, I have a friend who shares most of my Chem classes with me, so that is a big bonus, as we are the only 2 from our school who came to Monash.

So far, my impressions of uni have been good, the social opportunities are fine (even for an introvert), the Matheson library has a good fiction section, and the only trouble has been the travel. On some days it requires leaving at around 6am, and getting home around 7:30pm, with 3 hours travel per day, so that is a serious issue that I may have to resolve at some stage in the year. From now on I will try to update either weekly or bi-weekly as I see fit.. Thank you for reading, and have a good day/week/month/hour.

[K888]

I've heard that first semester of first year engineering can be a bit dry. I have several friends doing eng and now they're further along in the course they absolutely love it, they just found a) the transition to uni and b) the content of first sem to be difficult (not necessarily in terms of having to be a genius to understand it, just that it can be very dry/boring/unstimulating)

Keep at it! Sounds like you're doing well I hope the rest of this sem goes well for you and that you find it more interesting!!

[Yertle the Turtle]

So, that whole weekly or bi-weekly thing was actually a prank, and I think I was the only one who fell for it...

Basically, stuff has been going all right, I've found alternative accommodation for 2 days a week, which cuts down the morning commute by between half an hour and an hour, which I think is great. I've been trying to get more sleep, the assignments that were due 2 weeks ago went well. I just need to seriously tackle the procrastination problem, as I'm actually struggling more with the little 1% quizzes and stuff, so I really need to dedicate time to them earlier. However, Mid-sem starts tomorrow (for me, as a lab was cancelled on Thursday), and I'm leaving the confines of Victoria to travel for the first time to another part of Australia, which should be good. I also got an 8 hour day of demolition work last week, which was both lucrative and enjoyable (smashing up the concrete base of a shower with a single-hand sledgie ) so at the moment I'm feeling a lot happier with uni than I have been at all throughout the year. However, that one day of work has given me a taster, and now I'm seriously regretting the decision to come to uni rather than working, so, yeah. We'll see how today's 6-9 class goes (Good Friday replacement prac class) and then have a good Mid-sem, everyone!

[Bri MT]

Good to see you posting again!

iirc in CHM1011 labs you'll have recently done the pH curve & you'll have a group report due during the break - make sure you can trust your team to get stuff done & submitted especially if you might not have signal.  Also check for all your weekly quizzes whether there are ones due during the break - I've made that mistake too many times. 

Aside from that, I hope you have a great & rejuvenating mid sem