University.

[Nitefly]

Sounds like Law to me Nitefly. Undergraduate or the post grad conversion course? If it's the latter I'm told it's mental.

It is indeed the latter, although it's in the form of a 2 year MA at the University of Bristol. The reading expected is just obscene - the only way I cope is to attend the seminars with almost no preparation, pick up what I actually need to know, then learn that in depth.

Working smart over working hard every time ...

 

[doiks14]

That's because for courses like that, you're expected to do far, far more outside of lectures.

IIRC, a lecturer once said that for every hour in university, a student was expected to have done 20 hours reading outside.

I do 6 hours of lecture a week... so what your tutor said isn't exactly feasible in my case... Thats basically doing reading over 17 hours a day throughout the whole week I'd have no time for sexy time

edit: misread your post... thought you meant for every hour in a lecture... so Its even more than 17 hours a week since I'm in university 14.5 hours a week in total in that case, I need a time machine to make 1 day last more than 41 hours... lol

 

[Nix]

I do 6 hours of lecture a week... so what your tutor said isn't exactly feasible in my case... Thats basically doing reading over 17 hours a day throughout the whole week I'd have no time for sexy time

edit: misread your post... thought you meant for every hour in a lecture... so Its even more than 17 hours a week since I'm in university 14.5 hours a week in total in that case, I need a time machine to make 1 day last more than 41 hours... lol

Obviously it's not a rule. I think he was just trying to drum in the importance of actually picking up your books and getting your head down in your own time.

 

[Fraggr]

That's because for courses like that, you're expected to do far, far more outside of lectures.

IIRC, a lecturer once said that for every hour in university, a student was expected to have done 20 hours reading outside.

Lets be honest, that 20 hours independent for 1 hour contact time doesn't happen... How many people do you know that read for 80 hours a week as well as lectures?

My course has something like 21 hours of lectures, 2 general 1 hour tutorials, 1 hour long maths tutorial, 1 lab of 2 hours. Weekly. I'm expected to do a lot of reading - something like 2 hours per hour of contact time. Please don't try to tell me a liberal arts degree is as hard as an engineering or physics degree.

 

[Stewy]

5 hours a week contact time for Linguistics then 2 hours for my history elective. Get a lot more work from history and it's so much harder, bloody oxbridge rejects

 

[JonJ678]

Reading lists for the humanities can be completely ridiculous. The missus is supposed to have read everything ever written about the Iliad, as well as translating the entire thing as a quarter of her course. Poor lass is doing the law conversion course next year, somewhere in Bristol though I've stopped paying attention to exactly where. "Reading" is evidently more difficult than I can fully understand as an engineer.

 

[Fraggr]

Reading lists for the humanities can be completely ridiculous. The missus is supposed to have read everything ever written about the Iliad, as well as translating the entire thing as a quarter of her course. Poor lass is doing the law conversion course next year, somewhere in Bristol though I've stopped paying attention to exactly where. "Reading" is evidently more difficult than I can fully understand as an engineer.

The "Childbirth? You don't know pain until you've studied engineering" group on facebook is so, so right.

 

[DAnDan]

I'm in my first year at uni, doing chemistry; on an average week I have somewhere around 12 hours of lectures, an hour of maths (optional for me), and anywhere between 6 and 9 hours in the labs on a Tuesday.

So obviously it depends where/what you are studying to how you find your first year. While the work is not in any way unbearable, it's far, far from easy. As for the lecturers, there are a couple of foreign ones, but they all speak English, obviously, and their accents are mostly fine (once you get used to them). There's a noticeable amount of foreign students around, but they, in general, don't really seem to want to socialise with the rest of the students, and keep themselves in their own groups, but they're all nice when you do chat with them.

Overall, it's awesome. But I've seen an equal amount of people dislike it, to each their own.

 

[JonJ678]

Taken from Fraggr's reference, as I feel this is engineering perfectly summarised

You would assume a horse is a sphere to make the maths easier.

Law is doubtless rough, but at least there's no calculus involved.

Still waiting on the OP to say what degree he's taking

 

[Stewy]

My work at the moment is easier than GCSE maths tbph. Literally insultingly easy.

 

[DAnDan]

Still waiting on the OP to say what degree he's taking

Make that two.

 

[Voltar]

Reading lists for the humanities can be completely ridiculous. The missus is supposed to have read everything ever written about the Iliad, as well as translating the entire thing as a quarter of her course. Poor lass is doing the law conversion course next year, somewhere in Bristol though I've stopped paying attention to exactly where. "Reading" is evidently more difficult than I can fully understand as an engineer.

Yes, Reading is more difficult than you can understand. Undergrad reading ranges from mindless to taxing. Depending on language, content and critics.

Postgrad reading is impossible. It is not physically possible to do all of it. Also the level of thought and analysis required varies from average to insane.

 

[Fraggr]

Taken from Fraggr's reference, as I feel this is engineering perfectly summarised

Solving this was worth 1 mark: A[k^2e^(-kt)sin(pt)-2kpe^(-kt)cos(pt)-p^2e^(-kt)sin(pt)]+2kA[-ke^(-kt)sin(pt)+pe^(-kt)cos(pt)]+(p^2+k^2)Ae^(-kt)sin(pt) = 0

Edit: oh, and none of them are 0 and the answer is not numerical.

 

[Nix]

Lets be honest, that 20 hours independent for 1 hour contact time doesn't happen... How many people do you know that read for 80 hours a week as well as lectures?

My course has something like 21 hours of lectures, 2 general 1 hour tutorials, 1 hour long maths tutorial, 1 lab of 2 hours. Weekly. I'm expected to do a lot of reading - something like 2 hours per hour of contact time. Please don't try to tell me a liberal arts degree is as hard as an engineering or physics degree.

Where did I say anything about one degree being harder than the next? Get down off of your horse, there's no need for you to be up there.



The work I saw Art/Fine Art students do compared to the work I personally did (a traditional degree, but I'd still imagine you'd deem it inferior to your hard sciences, but let's put this straight right now) made me quite angry if truth be told: they can coast through three years and then do some ambigious A4 write-up where a large majority simply don't know the concepts they're playing with actually are, mean, or are called. They can't even value them, they just pass off the ability to sound like the do, and they still can walk with a degree. Whereas I had to work my backside off, picking up and dropping books on different subjects like they were going out of fashion, and trying to tackle a subject at university level often within days of being introduced to it. It's not easy.

Just because a subject doesn't specialise, doesn't mean it's easy. Far, far from it. Sometimes for that very reason, it makes it far more difficult as you're constantly wading through unfamiliar water. If you're specialised, at the very least you can draw upon your previous education on the subject and simply expand on it. Let's take your example above: most of us here won't be able to tackle that (I suppose half the reason why you've posted it), yet if it's only worth one mark, then you should be able to tackle that easily as you're already advanced in that area. At least your exams have the decency to break down where the marks come from. Let's see you write an essay on a given subject you learnt two days ago and try and get a good grade shall we?

If Nitefly's doing four hours a week in probably what you'd deem a 'liberal arts subject' is easy, then I'll eat my hat. The reason he has so much free-time is so he can read and the reason he has to read so much is because he has a lot to take in from many different subject areas. The same way a select few of the softer-sciences demand. As Nitefly said; you have to learn to work smart. That requires, whether you've realised it or not, a bit of brain-power.

So, before you get back on that horse of yours, remember that what's easy and what's hard is completely subjective, and if you're going to jump down my neck in future, at least have the decency to actually have a pop at me for something I've actually claimed or said.

 

[Stewy]

remember that what's easy and what's hard is completely subjective.

^+1, You can't paint, they can't do maths Move on.

 

[Nix]

^+1, You can't paint, they can't do maths Move on.

To be fair, you've summised brilliantly there, but returning to those Art students; it seemed few of them couldn't paint either. It's very much akin to modern-art in my book where it's empty, talentless and completely lacking in any value, but that's a whole separate rant and I think I'll spare you.

 

[JonJ678]

Strange equation you've posted. You've got a common factor of exp(-kt) which cannot equal zero so drops out, and rearranging then leads to f(k,p,A)*sin(pt)+cos(pt)[2kAp-2kAp] at which point cos drops out, shortly afterwards the coefficient of sin turns out to be zero, so the equation holds true for any k,p,t. Either I've copied it down wrong or I'm far sleepier than I realise.

What course did you do Nix?

 

[HAz]

The only good thing i can think about it would be cheep nights out and easy birds! about all i can think that would interest me in going uni lol

 

[Fraggr]

Where did I say anything about one degree being harder than the next? Get down off of your horse, there's no need for you to be up there.

That wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at this:

I used to have ~30 hours a week.

The 4 hours a week course is far more demanding.

I have done essays on stuff that I'd learned a couple of days ago and got good grades, actually - my soft science A level subject. Managed to get As on coursework that I read the book for 2 days before, wrote the essay in a few hours back in GCSE English. I also took an essay based subject or two at A level, and got an A in each of them. One was a soft science, the other was general studies. General studies isn't specialised by the looks of the name... It's an essay based subject that doesn't specialise. Does that make it useless compared to, say, economics? I'm using economics as it isn't a hard science like you seem to believe I adore.

That equation, despite it being worth 1 mark, it was something a lot of people had trouble with. They set us things that we find difficult, or there isn't really much learning going on.

 

[Nix]

That wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at this:


I have done essays on stuff that I'd learned a couple of days ago and got good grades, actually - my soft science A level subject. Managed to get As on coursework that I read the book for 2 days before, wrote the essay in a few hours back in GCSE English. I also took an essay based subject or two at A level, and got an A in each of them. One was a soft science, the other was general studies. General studies isn't specialised by the looks of the name... It's an essay based subject that doesn't specialise. Does that make it useless compared to, say, economics? I'm using economics as it isn't a hard science like you seem to believe I adore.

That equation, despite it being worth 1 mark, it was something a lot of people had trouble with. They set us things that we find difficult, or there isn't really much learning going on.

But do you see my point about specialisation? If it's only worth 1-mark, you're clearly expected to be very familiar with the area.

Also, it's not really fair to compare General Studies or any A-Level soft-science to that expected at university level. It's one thing to impress your school, it's another to be able to discuss something at incredible depth whilst knowing little about it; how do you talk at depth if you don't know other perspectives?

What course did you do Nix?

I studied Geography, mainly human geography. That meant at any one moment I'd probably be doing: sociology, psychology, economics, philosophy, earth-sciences, geology, history, geo-politics, etc. and on whatever I was addressing I was expected to be able to answer it to the same level as someone who'd been specialising on the subject for years. Now, you can't sit there and tell me that that's easy because it's not and I will vehemently disagree if you continue to assert it as so.

I guess you can say I've had an eclectic university education, whereas the rule seems to be that you're supposed to specialise, I branched out into many fields.