Anyways, good luck with your chemistry and I am looking forward to hearing updates in the future.
Thanks for the advice, Erutepa. I was exaggerating a bit when I said I was okay with flopping my 1/2s (I'm really not, I'd actually be mortified if that happened haha) but you're absolutely right. As for how my chemistry homework went...well. I decided to do some catch-up work for bio instead (FINALLY. I have conquered signal transduction. I think.) but I SWEAR I'm about to start chem! Really. I am. (trying to). My inner procrastination monkey just doesn't want to choose a research question to make a poster for. But I'm going to choose between
'What is the evidence that living things are made of stardust?' and
'How are nanomaterials used in medicine and research?'. Leaning toward the second one because there's more concrete stuff that I could write about, but the idea of nanotechnology intimidates me. We'll see what I end up with.
Hey Ashley,
Great to have you here. Nice subject mix! Obviously a little while away (and sorry if I've missed it somehow in this thread), but do you have any goals for after Year 12 atm? Or just like, y'know, do as well as you can over the next couple of years and then take it from there?
Aww, thanks dude. I'm pretty happy with the subjects I chose too - maybe I'm just weird but I like the way they look and sound together. Not to mention some of them I genuinely enjoy.
About careers and the future. Ideally, my parents want me to follow after my dad and do something in medicine. It's something that I wouldn't mind doing, because I find certain parts of the human body fascinating (bones! I love bones. They're lit. I'm going to make a whole appreciation post for bones sometime, I swear. Just amazing.), but the journey to medicine sounds so daunting. First off there's the UCAT, which some people consider a VCE subject of sorts in itself. There are actual tuition classes for that stuff and those Facebook ads keep harassing me and telling me that I should be doing tons of prep for it. If I can get a nice UCAT score and do undergrad med at somewhere like Monash, that'd be nice. But if my UCAT scores suck I can still try to rely on my ATAR to get me into biomed so I can apply for post grad medicine. Sounds easy but we all know IT'S GOING TO BE SUPER HARD, TAXING AND COMPETITIVE AND I DON'T THINK I'M GOOD ENOUGH TO DO IT.
Not to mention, WHAT ABOUT GAP YEARS?? I want one, so I can get a year to myself before I succumb to society's expectations and spend most of the rest of my life studying and working and probably settling down with a family and kids and eewwwwww no thanks, but my mum thinks it's unnecessary and I'll forget about everything I learnt in Year 12 so when I actually start my uni course I'll have zero (0) brain cells left, and honestly I'm a bit scared of that because there's a bit of truth value in that. Also I don't want to be left behind by my friends, or be the oldest in the cohort.
Moreover, I'm a bit obsessed with the UK. I really wanted to study there - specifically either Imperial College or Kings College London (Oxbridge is so out of reach that I haven't even considered applying), but there's so much in the way. Firstly, my school doesn't offer IB (that's why I'm here on Atarnotes after all), and even aside from that I'd have to get at least a 99.85 atar (according to their website) which frankly makes me feel insecure, oops, and also sit the BMAT or UKCAT, fly over for an interview, and have letters of recommendation from teachers - which is going to be hard, because I'm not really close with any of my teachers and I doubt they have much experience writing recommendation letters for UK unis. I'll need to do that as well as worry about what happens if (when) I don't get in - applying for domestic unis, sitting the UCAT, etc.
Also the fees?? I want to be financially independent from my parents as soon as possible but without scholarships, med schools in the UK charge more than $70,000AUD a year for international students. Not to mention financial aid, particularly for international students, is practically non-existent in the UK. 6 years of undergrad, plus living expenses is going to be just under $500,000AUD, and I'm actually going to expect it to be more than that because of Brexit and inflation. It's definitely an unrealistic ambition, one that I struck down quickly enough in Year 10 after meeting with my school's career advisor. Hopefully I can still do something in the UK in the future though. Maybe research? Wouldn't mind that.
...this is all assuming that I
can get into medicine in the first place, of course. I wouldn't be mad if I didn't - natural selection and all that jazz, you know? I'm just afraid of letting myself and my parents down. My mother of course, being the typical Asian parent, says it's okay if I do law too, or maybe commerce. Love those options. I'm not into law, because for all the philosophical articles I like to read I genuinely am bad at things like arguments and public speaking. And even though I find economics quite interesting I hate the idea of working at a desk for the rest of my life. So I've exhausted all the options my parents gave me. Yay.
I think if I can't get into medicine (but bones!!!!!! I love bones so much ugh) I wouldn't mind finding a career in some other subjects that I like and am Not Bad at - things like Latin, philosophy, linguistics and sociology/anthropology. Wow I sound like a snob. But the thing about departments like those is that it's hard to find a job in them that's not 100% deskwork, and also high paying (unfortunately that's a requirement both my parents and I have - albeit for different reasons). I wouldn't mind being a teacher, because I'm quite passionate about education, but I'm just scared of the stigma that comes with it (yes I'm a coward fight me (please don't)).
I also have a mini bucket list of things I want to do when I'm older, but some of them are reliant on what career path I choose. Some general ones though are:
- Get at least one PhD
- Get a sky-diving or deepsea diving license
- Go to Kings Canyon in the NT by myself and just enjoy the fuck out of nature because let me tell you, there is zero pollution there and at night there are so many more stars. Thanks year 8 camp
- Learn as many 'nice-seeming' languages I can (that doesn't really make sense. I mean languages like Arabic, Hebrew (!!), Thai, Russian (!!), etc.)
- Retire and move to Russia or Finland or Germany and live the rest of my life peacefully in solidarity with a ton of bread and cats.
- Be 'quietly successful'. It's a bit far-fetched but I kinda wanna be that one obscure person some grade 5 kid does a research project on for school.
I think overall, like a lot of other people, my motivation and confidence goes up and down in a disgustingly melodramatic way. One day I feel on top of the world and the next I know that ultimately I'm just an insignificant person who probably can't accomplish anything as big as what I hope for - and sometimes I don't care, which isn't great.. I found an article on that last year actually, it's something that some people call 'acedia' - essentially: not caring about anything and not having dreams, and being depressed about it because you
want to care and you
want the motivation and you
do have big dreams - but the want and motivation and dreams don't come and it's just a cycle that you keep digging a bigger hole for yourself with and it SUCKS. Wow, that almost got too deep. I never realised I could ramble this much. Anyways, that's pretty much what I think about my career, and my future.
Now
that was a long post. Guess my touch typing course from year 3 finally came in handy. Aaaaaaaaand now I should mention that I've wasted too much time procrastinating again (I have specific slots for that). Time to put my head down. An abrupt ending but it is what it is. If anyone's reading (sorry for my rambling), enjoy your evening:))