I am the second face of asianese.
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MATH1003 - Integral calculus and Modelling
Ease - 7/10
Not very difficult overall. If you've done 4 unit maths in high school, it shouldn't be too difficult. Like 3/4 of the course was just trying to remember what I did in high school whilst the other 1/4 was modelling certain scenarios and such. I'll admit that I had some trouble with generating some models, but the majority of the students found the content quite straightforward. The final was harder than expected and was an exception in terms of the relatively low difficulty of past papers. Although I will attribute the difficulty of the exam to my lack of effort. Remember kids, never get arrogant - it'll bite you in the ass.
Lecturer - Zhou Zhang (7/10), Andrew Papanicolau (2/10) and Bob Crossman (0.1/10)
Zhou Zhang: Pretty good lecturer. He goes through the content in depth and he actually puts the effort into trying to prove the theorems. Although he has a slight accent, it's hardly noticeable and that was the only negative a found.
Andrew Papanicolau: Copies directly from the compiled notebook for MATH1003 into his lecture notes and spends 1 hour reading off the projector. He's a new lecturer and although he has improved, I found his lecturing style quite disappointing.
Bob Crossman: All he does is whine about telling people to turn their phone's off. Explanations weren't very good at all.
Interest - 1/10
I found it to be quite tedious, especially since I learned most of the course in 4u. In terms of interest, I probably should have tried out for MATH1903 since it looks much, much more interesting but eh.
Overall - 5/10
Not too bad in difficulty but personally, not appealing at all.
MATH1005 - Statistics
Ease - 8/10
Statistics in my experience was basically probability in high school and a pinch of permutations and combinations. Some of the questions that were in the final were quite dodgy, but overall it's quite straightforward.
Lecturer - 10/10
Di Warren - What a passionate lecturer! I absolutely ADMIRED her enthusiasm. It's always great to see a lecturer who truly enjoys what he/she is teaching and personally, I was inspired to do better in statistics. Her explanations and examples were great as well as her notes. However, her notes can be too detailed which can be a negative to some.
Interest - 8/10
Well for the first half of stats, I just found it tedious but by the second half, it definitely picked up! I never thought I would've found such a unit interesting but here we have it - thanks to Di Warren
Overall - 9/10
I highly recommend statistics. Not too difficult and fitted in with a wonderful lecturer!
CHEM1102 - Chemistry 1B
Ease - 8/10
My first lecturer, Chris McErlean, frequently remarked "Organic chemistry is easy" and hey, it really is (in my opinion). No hard calculations except within the inorganic component of the course and it's all very theoretical. Just being able to use logic and some understanding will get you very far. I did note rote learn anything at all except the reagents for organic synthesis which becomes 2nd nature.
Lecturer - Chris McErlean 11/10, Tony Masters 11/10
Chris McErlean: Very passionate about chemistry. Wow, I looked forward to every chemistry lecture and had a blast learning the content. Every lecture I would literally be smiling for almost the full hour - I'm not even kidding. I loved organic chemistry thanks to this man! He does blast out some dry jokes but I found them hilarious since I am a fan of dry humour.
Tony Masters: Another passionate lecturer. He loves the Sydney Swans was one of the things I remembered. A funny bloke too who knew the content and could explain it clearly. His pacing is quite slow and you may find the he rushes the lectures towards the end of the semester, but nevertheless a top lecturer.
Interest - 9/10
Learning about the mechanisms, relevance and applications of organic chemistry was just awesome. Inorganic chemistry was interesting, but I found that going over acids and bases was kind of tedious.
Overall - 9/10
Another unit I would highly recommend to anyone!
PHYS1004 - Environmental Physics
Ease - 6/10
It was of okay difficulty except for when it came to currents and electromagnetism. Damn, I hated that. I just suck at physics anyways and found it sooooo boring, but many people found the content quite easy.
Lecturer - 7/10
Pulin Gong - Explains the content pretty well except he has an accent that may bother others.
Interest - 0.1/10
Sorry physicists, I just found the content extremely, extremely dry and had literally no motivation to study for it.
Overall - 4/10
If you're interested in physics, go for it. I'm just not interested in physics and had no motivation.
MBLG1001 - Molecular biology and genetics (Intro)
Ease - 5/10
What a course! Talk about throwing first years in the deep end. Study hard from day 1 guys, do not mess around with MBLG1001! It does get easier as the weeks go by. I found protein structures and such to be the hardest part of the course! The fortnightly 4 hour labs were a pain in the ass and the skills test....don't mention that thing again. The final was actually okay but I had to study pretty hard for it!
Lecturer - Danny Liu (11/10), Gareth Denyer (9/10), Vanessa Gysbers (9/10), Sashi Kant (2/10), Jenny Saleeba (2/10)
Danny Liu was one of my favourite lecturers so far in my degree. He knew how to make his lectures enjoyable. He knew how to apply everyday actions into concepts to make it clearer to the cohort about what was going on. The polls he used during the lectures actually made it more enjoyable since it involved active learning and of course, there were some students who entered stupid choices for shits and giggles.
Gareth Denyer was also a pretty good lecturer too as well as Vanessa. They were just engaging in my opinion and I found them quite entertaining! Sashi and Jenny weren't as good - inaudible, monotone and simply reading off the slides. I was quite disappointed.
Interest - 10/10
Some of my peers know that I've said "Fuck MBLG", "OMG i HATE it" etc etc but by the time the finals rolled in, everything clicked. I just loved everything about it! It was really interesting in my opinion - so interesting that I considered doing MBLG2971.
Overall - 9/10
Okay listen, MBLG1x01 is difficult. However, I recommend this to anyone! It is a common pre-requisite for intermediate and senior units so you might as well do it. By far one of the most difficult 1st year courses, this will challenge you quite a bit - whether you're naturally inclined or not. It will make you experience true pain but as Danny Liu said, it'll help you appreciate the other units you do that aren't so bad relatively. The only final thing i can say is that I survived MBLG1001 and in retrospect, I wish I did MBLG1901 purely out of interest and a tiny bit of scaling.