My HSFY Experience
My HSFY Experience
To preface this, I’ll split this blog into 4 main parts: before, semester one, semester
two and after. This will hopefully give you a good grasp of how my mentality changed
throughout the year and things I did to adjust and adapt.
Before:
Coming out of high school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, I had two options
by the end of year twelve, to do engineering in Canterbury or to do health science
(biomed) at Otago or Auckland. Throughout my year 13 I took statistics, biology,
chemistry, physics and PE, (took calculus in year 12), and it made me realise how
much I didn’t really like the mathematics aspect of school.
So, with the engineering pathway closed I looked more into the health science fields
in which by the end of year 13 led me to apply to the University of Auckland and the
University of Otago for their first-year biomedical sciences and health science
programs respectively.
I’m thinking of making a separate blog about why I chose Otago over Auckland, but
in short, the main factors for me personally was scholarship money, the student
culture and getting into my first-choice hall (will have a separate blog also about my
hall experience at Arana).
Heading down to Otago I thought I was pretty hot stuff not going to lie, my grades
throughout high school were pretty good, pretty much straight excellences as well as
having four NZQA scholarships under my belt. But boy was I wrong, what I didn’t
realise I was at a hall now where I wasn’t the smartest or the most talented, I was
just mediocre which looking back on it I was a little arrogant when I had no right to
be.
Academically before I had started I was very big into goal setting, setting
achievements for myself for the year, whether it be getting a certain amount of
excellence credits or scholarships, but I didn’t do that this year until it was too late
which I ultimately believe led to me not achieving to my maximum ability but I’ll get to
that later.
Semester 1:
I had been told things about HSFY before heading down, how the course was so
vigorous, a lot of rote learning and how if you want to succeed then you’ll have no
social life. Me being way too relaxed and chill decided to not follow any of this advice
and spend my first month doing the complete opposite of what I was told and warned
(haha). In semester 1 there’s a lot of stuff going on, adapting to living away from
home, adjusting to the “university lifestyle” and the new academic structure. The
month was crazy, hectic, fun and kind of weird.
Socially, I had the best time of my life, making new friends, going on a seven-day
bender throughout O week and just socking up living away from home and having a
new found independence. Academically which most of y’all are probably here to read
about personally I thought was really chill, we were told that that the course content
was reduced significantly as lectures were no longer more than 30 slides long and
lectures were only 3 times a week compared to 4 in the previous year.
In semester 1 you have to take four core papers, CELS 191, CHEM 191, PHSI 191
and HUBS 191. During the first month to eight weeks of HSFY, the only really new
topics are found in HUBS 191 in comparison to high school. CELS is really just level
2 biology (cells paper) in more depth in my opinion but you had to learn all the little
niggly information and there was a decent amount of it.
PHSI was really nice because they gave you a whole bunch of introductory maths
lectures about rearranging etc, they then cover mechanics roughly at a level 3
difficulty (scholarship physics was much harder), then new topics of solids and fluids
and then thermodynamics (similar to level 1 physics if you did the heat paper).
CHEM for the first half was all stoichiometry, level 3 aqueous and redox so all
familiar content. And then there was HUBS, I had no familiarity to the subject and
was just tried to wing it, I didn’t know what I needed to know and what I didn’t need
to know if that makes sense, I struggled and it reflected in my first progress test
result which was not good. But it made me stronger and actually more dedicated to
the subject once I came back from the break.
The first part of HUBS191 was all about musculoskeletal systems and anatomical
terms, the key thing to take from this is that HUBS is your first progress test about a
month in to the year and it comes up onto you quick so I would say you should
prepare adequately rather than try to cram and pull all-nighters before the exam and
fuel yourself on coffee.
Another thing I’ll mention is labs, these are three-hour practical sessions that are
COMPULSORY for you to attend every fortnight, they are stupid and a waste of time
in my opinion, especially the physics labs, but if there was one thing to take from this
is do not turn up dusty in your CHEM labs because there is a 2% lab test at the end
of the labs which are easy marks IF you pay attention
From here the second half of semester 1 brought dreaded final exams. CELS got
somewhat more interesting and more in depth with micro-biology but had a stupid
genetic variation module with the worst lecturer and all it was, was just level 1
genetics. CHEM got hard, you think organic chemistry was hard in high school, well
university organics is even harder, you’ll learn about reaction mechanisms and the
applications of organic chemistry, backside attacks and all.
PHSI was the same as high school, electricity, waves and nuclear physics. HUBS
got a hell of a lot more interesting, learning about the nervous system, endocrine and
immunology (Bruce Russell is the best lecturer all of semester 1, he literally told you
the answers to his part of the final in the lecture). I will be going over each paper in
depth in future blogs.
Overall the second half was much more interesting but significantly harder,
especially CHEM and HUBS. Heading into finals I was pretty confident but then
again not really as I didn’t know what to expect from the exams, all I could ask for is
to go in there and give it my best shot. Once the results came out I finished semester
1 with a 90% average, I thought that was really good, which it was if you compare it
to any other university course except HSFY. I was just average at HSFY.
I fell into the trap of playing the comparing game, I compared myself with my peers,
my friends and this is definitely the worst thing to do. But what it did do was teach me
resilience and that I need to crack down, work harder and block out others and focus
on myself, this is the first piece of advice I would give any HSFY student heading into
the year.
The second piece of advice after semester 1 would be to know that everything
matters, perfection is something that as kids were told that is something that no one
is, “no one is perfect”. But there are people who are perfect and that’s the mentality
you need to have heading into HSFY.
Every percent matters, every test no matter how small or big does matter. The
difference between my 90% and a 95% is not much when reflecting back, it’s about
5% which is about 7 marks out of 100 in the CHEM 191 final or 2-3 questions in the
PHSI final, details matter.
Semester 2:
During the break I sat the dreaded UCAT, and I thought it went ok, but was scared
because of the UCAT threshold rather than it being worth 33% of your grade like
previous years. I got an above average overall score, but it was carried by
exceptional scores in some of the subtests that shadowed my poorer performance in
others.
I’m planning on writing a whole blog discussing the UCAT in depth as well, how to
prepare, tips and tricks. Heading into semester 2 I definitely reeled in my social life,
rather than going out drinking every weekend, I instead had a good time in re-o
week, and then only went out probably 4-5 times the rest of semester for friends’
birthdays etc.
Academically I decided to pick up an 8 th paper, I was thinking of a few options and
ended up choosing STAT 115, I had gotten scholarship stats at high school and was
pretty familiar with most of the content. Along with STAT, there are 3 core semester
2 papers, BIOC 192, my favourite of the semester 2 papers, POPH 192 (the worst
paper of the year) and HUBS 192 which is a continuation of HUBS 191, different
content but taught with the same structure.
The first half of semester 2 I was much more organised. I sacrificed my social life for
hours in the library, but it was worth it. This time I was ready for the first HUBS
progress test a month in and did significantly better than last semester, I felt like I
was on top of my stuff. The first half of HUBS 192 was all about skin and the
cardiovascular system which was extremely interesting.
STAT 115 was by far the most chill paper of the lot, 100% plussage on the final, I
went to zero lectures and still got an A+, it’s that easy, trust me. The first two
modules of POPH absolutely suck. The humanities module was the most boring
thing that ever existed and the Maori and Pasifika module was personally not my
favourite. I thought it was important to know but should not be assessed (which the
department must have learnt, as they didn’t put it in the final but still screwed me
over in the progress test).
For example, one of the questions was when was the Treaty of Waitangi signed? In
no way am I trying to offend anyone but it was content like this that made the first
half of POPH pretty dull. BIOC was my favourite paper and what I’m looking to major
in next year (ah yeah postgrad haha), the first part was all about protein structure
and haemoglobin, which was interesting.
After the progress tests in the second semester I had some time during my semester
break to reflect on my year so far and what did I want to come out of the year. I had
an average grade percentage, an average UCAT and I didn’t know what I wanted to
do with my life. I applied for every course for second year to keep my options open,
but realistically I only wanted to get into medicine.
My pathways for this were slim. I later got news that my UCAT wasn’t good enough
for dentistry which hurt as I was literally 10 points of in DM, but it wasn’t the end of
the world as I never really wanted to do dentistry. I settled on a game plan for the
next 3 years. I would either get in (to med) this year (realistically no chance) or I
would do a BSc and get in postgrad. I lacked motivation in the second half and
focused on the subjects that would actually benefit my future.
I learnt all of STAT in the four days between POPH and STAT and did pretty good,
STAT itself isn’t too much of a bore it’s very easy. POPH became more epidemiology
rather than humanities and was similar to STAT was very repetitive and slow I
thought. BIOC became infinitely more interesting with digestion modules and
metabolic pathways which I loved, and others loathed, and which had a good
amount of cross over with HUBS192.
In HUBS 192 we learnt about respiratory, gastrointestinal, renal and sexual
pathways, of which all were very interesting. I felt more confident going into finals
than last semester and felt liked I knocked it out of the park, except for POPH. After
getting my second semester results back, I finished with very similar grades to
semester 1 and finished the year with an 89.5% average, definitely not good enough
to reach my goals this year but I’m ok with that.
After:
Looking back on the year and reflecting on the year I was proud of myself, I got
through the arguably hardest and most competitive first year course in New Zealand.
I finished with an A average (so close to an A+!). I made friends for life and most
importantly had a really great time doing it.
I believed I got the most out of my first-year experience in Dunedin with a complete
balance in life. Initially I was kicking myself about how I could have done this better
by spending more time studying, but I came to the conclusion that I can’t do anything
about it. That is one of the main reasons why I started this blog, to inspire, help and
assist anyone who is heading down to Dunedin to embark on the journey of HSFY.
My plan for the future is to attempt to enter medicine postgrad after doing a BSc
hopefully.
I learnt so much about myself this year and how much I can accomplish if I put my
mind to something. I plan on making a lot more blogs about the year and get into
some of those gritty details like the papers, parties and UCAT. I hope you enjoyed
reading about my experience in HSFY and if you have any questions or feedback
feel free to comment them or email me.
To preface this, I’ll split this blog into 4 main parts: before, semester one, semester
two and after. This will hopefully give you a good grasp of how my mentality changed
throughout the year and things I did to adjust and adapt.
Before:
Coming out of high school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, I had two options
by the end of year twelve, to do engineering in Canterbury or to do health science
(biomed) at Otago or Auckland. Throughout my year 13 I took statistics, biology,
chemistry, physics and PE, (took calculus in year 12), and it made me realise how
much I didn’t really like the mathematics aspect of school.
So, with the engineering pathway closed I looked more into the health science fields
in which by the end of year 13 led me to apply to the University of Auckland and the
University of Otago for their first-year biomedical sciences and health science
programs respectively.
I’m thinking of making a separate blog about why I chose Otago over Auckland, but
in short, the main factors for me personally was scholarship money, the student
culture and getting into my first-choice hall (will have a separate blog also about my
hall experience at Arana).
Heading down to Otago I thought I was pretty hot stuff not going to lie, my grades
throughout high school were pretty good, pretty much straight excellences as well as
having four NZQA scholarships under my belt. But boy was I wrong, what I didn’t
realise I was at a hall now where I wasn’t the smartest or the most talented, I was
just mediocre which looking back on it I was a little arrogant when I had no right to
be.
Academically before I had started I was very big into goal setting, setting
achievements for myself for the year, whether it be getting a certain amount of
excellence credits or scholarships, but I didn’t do that this year until it was too late
which I ultimately believe led to me not achieving to my maximum ability but I’ll get to
that later.
Semester 1:
I had been told things about HSFY before heading down, how the course was so
vigorous, a lot of rote learning and how if you want to succeed then you’ll have no
social life. Me being way too relaxed and chill decided to not follow any of this advice
and spend my first month doing the complete opposite of what I was told and warned
(haha). In semester 1 there’s a lot of stuff going on, adapting to living away from
home, adjusting to the “university lifestyle” and the new academic structure. The
month was crazy, hectic, fun and kind of weird.
Socially, I had the best time of my life, making new friends, going on a seven-day
bender throughout O week and just socking up living away from home and having a
new found independence. Academically which most of y’all are probably here to read
about personally I thought was really chill, we were told that that the course content
was reduced significantly as lectures were no longer more than 30 slides long and
lectures were only 3 times a week compared to 4 in the previous year.
In semester 1 you have to take four core papers, CELS 191, CHEM 191, PHSI 191
and HUBS 191. During the first month to eight weeks of HSFY, the only really new
topics are found in HUBS 191 in comparison to high school. CELS is really just level
2 biology (cells paper) in more depth in my opinion but you had to learn all the little
niggly information and there was a decent amount of it.
PHSI was really nice because they gave you a whole bunch of introductory maths
lectures about rearranging etc, they then cover mechanics roughly at a level 3
difficulty (scholarship physics was much harder), then new topics of solids and fluids
and then thermodynamics (similar to level 1 physics if you did the heat paper).
CHEM for the first half was all stoichiometry, level 3 aqueous and redox so all
familiar content. And then there was HUBS, I had no familiarity to the subject and
was just tried to wing it, I didn’t know what I needed to know and what I didn’t need
to know if that makes sense, I struggled and it reflected in my first progress test
result which was not good. But it made me stronger and actually more dedicated to
the subject once I came back from the break.
The first part of HUBS191 was all about musculoskeletal systems and anatomical
terms, the key thing to take from this is that HUBS is your first progress test about a
month in to the year and it comes up onto you quick so I would say you should
prepare adequately rather than try to cram and pull all-nighters before the exam and
fuel yourself on coffee.
Another thing I’ll mention is labs, these are three-hour practical sessions that are
COMPULSORY for you to attend every fortnight, they are stupid and a waste of time
in my opinion, especially the physics labs, but if there was one thing to take from this
is do not turn up dusty in your CHEM labs because there is a 2% lab test at the end
of the labs which are easy marks IF you pay attention
From here the second half of semester 1 brought dreaded final exams. CELS got
somewhat more interesting and more in depth with micro-biology but had a stupid
genetic variation module with the worst lecturer and all it was, was just level 1
genetics. CHEM got hard, you think organic chemistry was hard in high school, well
university organics is even harder, you’ll learn about reaction mechanisms and the
applications of organic chemistry, backside attacks and all.
PHSI was the same as high school, electricity, waves and nuclear physics. HUBS
got a hell of a lot more interesting, learning about the nervous system, endocrine and
immunology (Bruce Russell is the best lecturer all of semester 1, he literally told you
the answers to his part of the final in the lecture). I will be going over each paper in
depth in future blogs.
Overall the second half was much more interesting but significantly harder,
especially CHEM and HUBS. Heading into finals I was pretty confident but then
again not really as I didn’t know what to expect from the exams, all I could ask for is
to go in there and give it my best shot. Once the results came out I finished semester
1 with a 90% average, I thought that was really good, which it was if you compare it
to any other university course except HSFY. I was just average at HSFY.
I fell into the trap of playing the comparing game, I compared myself with my peers,
my friends and this is definitely the worst thing to do. But what it did do was teach me
resilience and that I need to crack down, work harder and block out others and focus
on myself, this is the first piece of advice I would give any HSFY student heading into
the year.
The second piece of advice after semester 1 would be to know that everything
matters, perfection is something that as kids were told that is something that no one
is, “no one is perfect”. But there are people who are perfect and that’s the mentality
you need to have heading into HSFY.
Every percent matters, every test no matter how small or big does matter. The
difference between my 90% and a 95% is not much when reflecting back, it’s about
5% which is about 7 marks out of 100 in the CHEM 191 final or 2-3 questions in the
PHSI final, details matter.
Semester 2:
During the break I sat the dreaded UCAT, and I thought it went ok, but was scared
because of the UCAT threshold rather than it being worth 33% of your grade like
previous years. I got an above average overall score, but it was carried by
exceptional scores in some of the subtests that shadowed my poorer performance in
others.
I’m planning on writing a whole blog discussing the UCAT in depth as well, how to
prepare, tips and tricks. Heading into semester 2 I definitely reeled in my social life,
rather than going out drinking every weekend, I instead had a good time in re-o
week, and then only went out probably 4-5 times the rest of semester for friends’
birthdays etc.
Academically I decided to pick up an 8 th paper, I was thinking of a few options and
ended up choosing STAT 115, I had gotten scholarship stats at high school and was
pretty familiar with most of the content. Along with STAT, there are 3 core semester
2 papers, BIOC 192, my favourite of the semester 2 papers, POPH 192 (the worst
paper of the year) and HUBS 192 which is a continuation of HUBS 191, different
content but taught with the same structure.
The first half of semester 2 I was much more organised. I sacrificed my social life for
hours in the library, but it was worth it. This time I was ready for the first HUBS
progress test a month in and did significantly better than last semester, I felt like I
was on top of my stuff. The first half of HUBS 192 was all about skin and the
cardiovascular system which was extremely interesting.
STAT 115 was by far the most chill paper of the lot, 100% plussage on the final, I
went to zero lectures and still got an A+, it’s that easy, trust me. The first two
modules of POPH absolutely suck. The humanities module was the most boring
thing that ever existed and the Maori and Pasifika module was personally not my
favourite. I thought it was important to know but should not be assessed (which the
department must have learnt, as they didn’t put it in the final but still screwed me
over in the progress test).
For example, one of the questions was when was the Treaty of Waitangi signed? In
no way am I trying to offend anyone but it was content like this that made the first
half of POPH pretty dull. BIOC was my favourite paper and what I’m looking to major
in next year (ah yeah postgrad haha), the first part was all about protein structure
and haemoglobin, which was interesting.
After the progress tests in the second semester I had some time during my semester
break to reflect on my year so far and what did I want to come out of the year. I had
an average grade percentage, an average UCAT and I didn’t know what I wanted to
do with my life. I applied for every course for second year to keep my options open,
but realistically I only wanted to get into medicine.
My pathways for this were slim. I later got news that my UCAT wasn’t good enough
for dentistry which hurt as I was literally 10 points of in DM, but it wasn’t the end of
the world as I never really wanted to do dentistry. I settled on a game plan for the
next 3 years. I would either get in (to med) this year (realistically no chance) or I
would do a BSc and get in postgrad. I lacked motivation in the second half and
focused on the subjects that would actually benefit my future.
I learnt all of STAT in the four days between POPH and STAT and did pretty good,
STAT itself isn’t too much of a bore it’s very easy. POPH became more epidemiology
rather than humanities and was similar to STAT was very repetitive and slow I
thought. BIOC became infinitely more interesting with digestion modules and
metabolic pathways which I loved, and others loathed, and which had a good
amount of cross over with HUBS192.
In HUBS 192 we learnt about respiratory, gastrointestinal, renal and sexual
pathways, of which all were very interesting. I felt more confident going into finals
than last semester and felt liked I knocked it out of the park, except for POPH. After
getting my second semester results back, I finished with very similar grades to
semester 1 and finished the year with an 89.5% average, definitely not good enough
to reach my goals this year but I’m ok with that.
After:
Looking back on the year and reflecting on the year I was proud of myself, I got
through the arguably hardest and most competitive first year course in New Zealand.
I finished with an A average (so close to an A+!). I made friends for life and most
importantly had a really great time doing it.
I believed I got the most out of my first-year experience in Dunedin with a complete
balance in life. Initially I was kicking myself about how I could have done this better
by spending more time studying, but I came to the conclusion that I can’t do anything
about it. That is one of the main reasons why I started this blog, to inspire, help and
assist anyone who is heading down to Dunedin to embark on the journey of HSFY.
My plan for the future is to attempt to enter medicine postgrad after doing a BSc
hopefully.
I learnt so much about myself this year and how much I can accomplish if I put my
mind to something. I plan on making a lot more blogs about the year and get into
some of those gritty details like the papers, parties and UCAT. I hope you enjoyed
reading about my experience in HSFY and if you have any questions or feedback
feel free to comment them or email me.
Thanks for sharing! I really appreciate the time and effort you put in to write about your HSFY journey. I went to Salmond myself. Glad to have gotten a place in Dentistry for 2020.
ReplyDeleteHSFY was a struggle, but it was worth it in the end. I learnt heaps about my strengths and weaknesses along the way.
All the best for your BSc! I'll have to buy you a pint at Starter's if we cross paths at some point.
As a current y13 student, cheers for all this
ReplyDeleteThanks for this! I was wondering what happened and if you got into med school! Also do you reckon now that there is no UCAT for dentistry I would be able to get in next year? It's been my dream to get into dentistry since I was a young fella and I need it to happen! Anyways, what grades should I aim for? (obviously aiming for that 100%)
ReplyDelete