Written by Ada Crain
My first session is down on my course – Bachelor of Animal Science – and I would like to give you a perspective of what it’s like to start this degree.
First off, the one thing that has been off an automatic positive of university life is how easily it is for me to make friends. Even though I don’t live on campus, it has been easy to find people to talk to as they have similar goals to you, and that has been a godsend.
My subjects for this session included, Introduction to Animal Science, Chemistry, Biology and Indigenous Australian Cultures, Histories and Contemporary Realities. Now I’m not sure about how you feel about these but I wasn’t, well enthused. Fortunately, I studied Biology in school so that wasn’t a problem. Chemistry on the other hand, was kind of an issue. For me personally that was the hardest thing of session one, Chemistry. So for anyone wanting to study this course it is extremely important to do Chemistry in school as that will be beneficial for both Session 1 and 2 of your first year.
As a 2021 school graduate coming straight out of HSC, the way of university life is very new. The formatting of assignments and length of practicals each week really threw me. The timetable also threw me! I had three, three hour practicals a week which I’m not going to lie were not exactly fun. Biology and Chemistry pracs were not great as we had to sit on a chair in a lab for three hours, but the Intro to Animal Science subject was very engaging. They allowed everyone in the course to establish skills/knowledge for many different enterprises including, aquaculture which I hadn’t had much to do with prior.
The one thing I would say to someone thinking about this course is that don’t worry if you aren’t off a property as they teach you skills with all enterprises including the mainstream ones, cattle and sheep. I would also say that this course would be extremely beneficial for someone that doesn’t know what they want to do in the animal industry but know that’s what they want to do.
So far I have found that there isn’t a specific focus in this course, its just all things science and animals (hence the name lol). What has surprised me the most about this start to university life was how unsure about my future I have become. For the longest time I have wanted to become a vet, but these four months of uni have really challenged me to dive into what I really want to do. This life for the next 7-8 years is really for me. Many people who I have listened to or talked to have said “yea I wanted to do that too but I did this instead” and that was really scary. But what I know is that you can’t really know if something is for you unless you try it so I’m just going to keep going with this current career path of hopefully transferring from animal science to vet and see where it takes me.
