Picking My Year 2 Papers (+ advice on adding a conjoint)
Do you want to know how I chose my papers for my second year of BHSc/BSc and how I managed to switch to a conjoint? Keep reading for more!
The title and blurb is pretty self-explanatory! In this post, I’ll be talking about the electives I chose, the problems I faced and how I applied for my conjoint after my first year of university.
I feel like this is a pretty important post to make, especially for those coming out of first year BHSc and wanting to know what options there as you continue throughout the degree. First, I’ll explain the application process for a conjoint as an undergraduate student, how I prepared to make that switch, and then I’ll break down how I chose my papers by faculty. Remember, this is just how I picked my papers and how I did it for myself — you may find other things that work for you and/or have other interests different from mine! Make sure you pick what is best for you :)
Conjoint After First Year?
Tbh, I was very very hesitant to go through ANOTHER application process just to add what felt like a couple of extra papers to my already three year degree. However, once I did it, I remembered how easy it was, especially as already an existing student at UoA!
Basically, all I had to do was follow the same process I did when applying as a school leaver. I applied for my conjoint around mid-November after exams by accessing the application website and starting a new application for a BHSc/BSc conjoint. After that it said that it would have to wait until my results for the year were out, which would’ve been around the 4th of December.
I was actually pretty anxious waiting for my results (I honestly have no idea why) and didn’t know when my application would be accepted or declined. The cutoff GPA for a conjoint is at least 3.5 each year, which calmed me down a little because I knew I was well above that threshold. And sure enough, when my anxiety got the best of me and I logged into my application portal on December 5th, I had already been accepted :D
How I Prepared for My Conjoint
No, by preparation I do not mean priming (the days of prestudying for BIOSCI 107 are OVER).
As a Type A personality, I’m naturally a control freak — I love organising timetables and making sure I plan my life ahead according to my goals. That’s why I went the extra mile and decided to look at what papers were on offer for both BHSc and BSc before I made that jump. This was simply to make sure I was still interested in doing both courses before I made the commitment of accepting my conjoint offer. By NO MEANS do you have to do this, it was simply a way to organise my thoughts and see what my next 3 years at uni would look like.
To do this, I first drafted a degree planner (you can find them easily on the UoA website) for both the BHSc and BSc side separately, knowing that I only had to do 255 points for each with varying prerequisites. I then looked at the conjoint degree planner and made sure what I wanted to study aligned with what I could do. If you’re stuck on this step, I highly recommend going into Student Services for each respective faculty, sitting down and actually go through the degree planner to make sure you are able to meet every requirement. I didn’t do this myself because of lockdown and the fact that I could luckily find everything I needed online (except a few things — I’ll explain later).
After I did this, I went onto the UoA Course Outline website and had a look at when each course would typically run (i.e. Semester 1, Semester 2) so I could draft a timetable between 2022 and 2024 that meant I could finish my conjoint in the least amount of time possible. This kind of mattered to me since I want to do a postgrad degree afterwards and wanted to ensure I wasn’t in university when I became a grandma. I put all this information on spreadsheet so I could refer to it whenever I wanted to plan my timetable and enrol in courses.
After I had done this I had a couple of questions:
- Did I need to take two STATS courses to fulfil requirements for both BHSc and BSc?
- How could I reassign courses I had already done as part of BHSc to BSc?
Once I had finished this stage, I emailed both respective faculties about my concerns. While it did take a week or so for both of them to get back to me, they luckily made everything super clear.
In regards to the STATS courses, I only had to take STATS 101 to fulfil the requirements for BHSc. It would also automatically count towards a prerequisite for any science courses that required it. However, I would need to take an ‘Any Stage Science’ to fill that gap. As for reassigning courses, I emailed both faculties which sent me a form to be able to do this. I don’t have a link for it anymore but if you email your respective faculty, they’ll send it to you. They also kindly filled out a degree planner for me without me even asking which helped me know whether I was on the right track.
BHSc Courses
In my first year, I did all of the pre-clinical papers as my electives (BIOSCI 107, CHEM 110 and MEDSCI 142). Therefore, I was actually very excited to make my own decisions when it came to choosing what time my lectures were and electives. The only thing I needed to do for my Stage I papers now was to take STATS 101, which I decided I would do in Summer School.
Obviously in second year BHSc you need to take the core papers MAORIHTH 201, POPLHLTH 202, POPLHLTH 204 and POPLHLTH 210, with spaces for two Stage II or III electives. I originally wanted to follow the Mental Health and Addictions pathway as close as possible. Therefore, I wanted to take POPLHTLH 207 (Community and Cultural Development), 208 and/or 212 (Bio-Behavioural Aspects of Drug Use). From just looking over the papers and course outlines (except the fact I didn’t know 212 was a course at the time), I enrolled in 207 and 208 for Semester 2. I was also considering doing 203 in Semester 1 beforehand but it didn’t fit in with me wanting to do PSYCH 108. However, I had talked to my friends about 207 and they all said that it was quite a tricky course and wasn’t as enjoyable as some of the others. I quickly unenrolled and found 212 instead which caught my eye. It luckily filled the gap of 207 quite easily so I didn’t have to reshuffle my entire timetable.
However, a problem arose when 212 got cancelled for 2022. I did really want to take it in subsequent years but honestly there was no point, considering doing a conjoint severely impacted how I timetabled things. I asked some of my friends for advice who all said that POPLHLTH 206 was a great option, as it was both interesting and a GPA booster. While I never really pictured myself doing nutrition, I did find whatever I could find of the course quite easy to understand as well as relatable to everyday life.
The only problem now is that I had a gap in my timetable for Semester Two. I couldn’t fill this with a PSYCH paper because I had only scheduled PSYCH 109 for that semester. Therefore, I looked for a POPLHLTH paper that I would find interesting and that didn’t clash with anything else. I had asked my friends about 211 (Introduction to Environmental Health) since in the past it was a very easy course. However, the course coordinators had recently changed and were quite bad from people’s accounts. I wasn’t going to take that risk with my GPA, thanks. The only options I had for Stage II POPLHLTH papers were 213 (Special Topic) which didn’t really tickle my fancy and 216 (Quantitative Methods in Health) which clashed with PSYCH 109. Therefore, I had to go hunting at Stage III papers which honestly kind of scared me. Was I even ready for that jump or stress? I looked at 313 (Health in Asian Communities) which I was already wanting to take in Stage III and was going to do it… until I realised from other people’s accounts that it was a very stressful course with a number of projects. I decided to keep this for a later time because Semester 1 was already looking hella full, and I wanted to make sure I had a ‘chiller’ second semester. Therefore, I decided to take 305 because I thought it would be good to have done 206 the semester before to prepare for it (also there’s no exam!).
After all this planning, these are the BHSc courses I ended up enrolling in and why I chose them:
Summer School
- STATS 101 (core) — Concepts in Statistics
Semester 1
- POPLHLTH 202 (core) — Research Methods in Health
- POPLHLTH 204 (core) — Health Care Ethics
- POPLHLTH 206 — Life Cycle Nutrition: One of the only electives that fit in my timetable, but also sounded interesting and I could relate it to my own health
- POPLHLTH 210 (core) — Equity and Inequalities in Health
Semester 2
- MAORIHTH 201 (core) — Introduction to Maori Health
- POPLHLTH 208 — Mental Health Development: I really want to work in a health career related to mental health and I hope this provides me a good foundation to do so
- POPLHLTH 305 — Community Nutrition: One of the only electives that fit in my timetable but was also good to build on what I would learn in 206
BSc Courses
On the BSc side, there wasn’t really much I needed to take in 2022 so I could finish my degree within four years. I decided to transfer all my premed papers to BSc so it was essentially as if I completed almost a year of a general BSc degree. All I needed was to take the Stage I Psychology papers I hadn’t done yet.
There were a few problems I had with this. I had originally thought that HLTHPSYC 122 I took in my first year would be enough to fulfil at least 15 of my psychology points since my friend who does BNurs had a similar experience. However, I quickly found out this wasn’t the case and had to enrol in both PSYCH 108 and 109 before I did any Stage II papers. Total bummer. I decided to try get both done in first semester so I could move onto Stage II ASAP, but of course, this was wishful thinking when you do a conjoint. I settled with taking one per semester to lighten the load and hopefully this helps my GPA a little!
If you look at the Psychology degree planner, you may also notice that one Stage I Statistics course is required to do most Stage II and beyond Psychology papers. Along with being a prerequisite for the BHSc side of my conjoint, it also acts as a prerequisite getting me into higher level PSYCH papers. Hitting two birds with one stone. Yay!
I also took a bit of a wildcard, enrolling in MAORI 130(G) during Summer School. I had originally wanted all of my premed papers to count towards the Science part of my degree, and took MAORI 130 to fill the gap of a Stage I elective in BHSc. To my surprise, MAORI 130 actually counts as a Science course! I also found out it was one of the easiest Stage I papers you could take out of all degrees, so I’m glad I jumped on this opportunity.
My Science timetable this year is looking pretty empty, but it looks something like this:
Summer School
- MAORI 130 — Te Ao Māori / The Māori World: Was originally going to take as part of BHSc, but could count credits towards BSc
- STATS 101 — Concepts in Statistics: Prerequisite for both BHSc and BSc (points only count towards BHSc)
Semester 1
- PSYCH 108 (core) — Individual, Social and Applied Psychology
Semester 2
- PSYCH 109 (core) — Mind, Brain and Behaviour
Cross Credited Papers
- CHEM 110 — Chemistry of the Living World: Did as part of FYHS
- MEDSCI 142 — Organ Systems: Did as part of FYHS
And that is a very very (overly) detailed of how I picked my papers for 2022! I’m super excited to start my new journey into a conjoint of BHSc and BSc majoring in Psychology, and have loved picking my potential pathways to open up opportunities for me later down the line! If you have any questions please email me at goingpsychology@gmail.com, I’m always happy to help!
Stay safe, stay healthy and stay happy!
Going Psycho(logy) ^.^
