How would i go about studying this material?

Question

I want to get a head start in my health science course at university next year and was wondering if anyone had background info on the following so i can study up (i've taken a year off before uni):

This is the quote from the uni site:

First year: An interdisciplinary common year in which students undertake units alongside peers from across the Faculty of Health Sciences. The focus is on basic human biosciences and factors influencing health and on developing an understanding of the roles of health professionals in the health and welfare sectors.

Apparently all health science students do the same first year. and this is it. Any help is appreciated. thanks

Answer 1

I'm first year med science - 1st semester we did Chemistry, Cellular Basis of Life, Maths and Stats and Physics. Now we are doing Anatomy, Physiology, Cell and Molecular Biology and Experimental Chem. It kind of varies with the different Health Sciences (maybe one or two units). Most University web pages will actually list the specific units that your course will include - so have a click around the site. Also, I don't think actually getting a head start is very useful as we covered a lot af stuff I didn't think we would, and didn't cover things I thought we would. The best thing to do is when starting University, to keep up with the work load - study constantly - then there will really be no need for a head start. Enjoy the rest of your time off - Uni can be hectic !!!

Answer 2

This is geared towards physio obviously. Your australian too? I'm irish and not a physiotherapist. But in general, most health science courses may require some knowledge of basic biology and chemistry and maybe physics in your case as the basis of what you study later on requires some minor knowledge of these fields...are these subjects mentioned. It also depends on the standard of school education in your country. Irish education, the leaving cert, is of a poorer quality to the english A levels and so in our university first year basically brings you up to A level science knowledge.In Britain, they wouldn't bother with that year because their school kids know it already....I'm not sure about australia.

If you study chemistry, biology and physics they'll probably look at cell structure/organelles/DNA/RNA/Protein structure/Bacteria/Viruses in biology, Organic chemistry/inorganic chemistry/physical chemistry in chemistry and things like force/density/momentum/electrostatics/op... etc in physics so that you'll understand various scans in medicine.

I've done 2 degrees in science and basically a lot of university is psychology ...don't exhaust yourself to early. Also, the academic types usually would be unemployable in the "real world" which is a term of offense to most college lecturers so don't use it and they simply think about their subject along a very narrow line- so if you get the knack of how they want their questions answered then its easy to get good marks. Having said that physios are superbly trained all over the world.

I wouldn't worry too much about failing..yes, if it feels like a fulltime 9-6 job you're doing fine ! Because the american model of secondary education is being adopted in the west more and more, a lot of the scholl kids come to university with over inflated concepts of their abilities. The univesities have had to adapt to this and a lot of the time you get marks for showing the method or attempting the question rather than getting it right. The bottomline is to attempt all assignments and hand them in even if its only rubbish...you get 50% usually anyhow. People who fail usually don't bother handing in stuff because they didn't understand what to do but in school they were always the brightest kid and got great marks...i.e. they lose confidence quickly because the school system was designed to give them confidence rather than training.

As an example of how universities will attempt to pass you at all costs you should see this years results in Ireland: hardly anyone passed pass maths. As a result the universities are holding special maths entrance exams for those people who otherwise qualify for engineering/science/architecture/compute... science courses in order to pass them through into the courses!!!!!!!!!!!

So don't panic. put in steady work, enjoy meeting new people and give it ago. Good luck