• music

    how does janet DO it

    April 16, 2020

    Hi Aska, is there anyone who has transferred midway (I am in 2nd year) to a completely new major in the Faculty of Arts and Science. How likely is it to finish a whole 7 credits in the span of 2 years? If it helps, it is the Music major under the Faculty of Arts and Science, and I want to finish all 7 credits in 2 years. Are the prerequisites really strict or can i take different year courses at the same time? Thanks!

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    hey there,

    is there anyone who’s transferred to a completely new major in the faculty of arts and science after second year? well, i’m not a good place janet, so i can’t tell you for certain, but it doesn’t seem implausible to me.

    aaand i’m also very clearly not a good place janet because i learned, today, that there’s a music degree under the big ol’ artsci umbrella. as in, separate from the faculty of music? huhhhh ok.

    to my knowledge, it should be perfectly doable to finish 7 FCEs over the span of two years. that is, 7 miscellaneous FCEs. it gets a little more complicated when you’re dealing with 7 program requirement FCEs, because then you have pesky things to think about like prereqs. let’s try to unravel that whole mess right here and now so we can get a sense of the feasibility of what you wanna do:

    oh boy. okay. so i’m giving you my feedback in real time, which is a new thing i’m trying, and my guess is that you hit the same wall i did. in other words, you did the thing where you look up the music major program, cool cool cool, here it is, and then you click on the music major requirements. first year, higher years, all there. everything looks normal. but then you take it to the next stage, and literally none of the first year requirements are in the current calendar. 

    try ’em. HMU111H1, HMU126H1, TMU115H1, TMU140Y1 … nothing. why? if this major was a place, it would be one of those desert oasis mirages. looks legit while you’re on your way there, but when you get down to it and want what it has, poof.

    so um, it appears we have hit a dead end. i even tried looking up HMU courses on the fall/winter timetable, also with literally no results. what is going ON?

    all right, all right. i would recommend that you reach out to either the registrar or assistant registrar of the faculty of music, then, and see if they know anything about the ultra-mysterious HMU program. does it exist? does it… not? is course registration so exclusive that you literally can’t figure out what you’re getting into until you’re already in? if they know anything, they’ll probably be your best bet at figuring out whether you’ll be able to finish all 7 credits in 2 years.

    best of luck!! what a MYSTERY i hope the music registrars can help you figure it out. sorry i couldn’t be more useful– my powers can feel so dreadfully limited at times like these.

    be Boundless,

    aska

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  • chem,  engineering,  grad school

    i had to google submatriculate, but i think i’m still qualified to run this blog

    April 11, 2020

    Hi! I’m a (possibly) incoming UTSG artsci freshman who has too many academic interests. Firstly, would it be possible to do a 2nd major (or minor or 2nd degree) in biomedical engineering? Secondly, is there a way to submatriculate into an MSc program from chem/biochem specialization? Lastly, is there some way for me to skip the introductory courses (apart from transfer credit)? Sorry for ruining your day with a barrage of obscure questions! ?

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    hey hey,

    lmao i feel like 40% of the people on this site are in some kind of serious academic trouble, and 20% are keeners like you (very kind, apologize too much, interested in literally everything). don’t worry, you’re not ruining my day with a barrage of obscure questions. i thrive on obscure questions. we cool.

    i’m not aware of any option to take biomedical engineering in conjunction with an artsci program. to even be eligible for biomedical engineering as a minor, you need to be in one of the core 8 engineering programs or in engsci. the biomedical systems engineering major, meanwhile, has hella requirements. you only get to enter it after two full years of engsci foundational courses. i can’t imagine an artsci kid juggling that on top of another major, even if it were allowed. i suppose you can get in contact with the department if you really wanna know for sure, but i think the answer is unfortunately no on this one.

    to address the lil’ musing about second degrees you seem to have thrown in…. i’m not really sure if a second degree is really what you wanna do, even if you’re super thrilled about everything. i have a feeling your first degree will tire you out a lil, or at least enough to make you wanna reconsider. especially doing a second degree in engsci, i dunno man, it seems like a lot. and then when you add the amount of student debt you’d be carrying after one degree, let alone two… yikes. just some things to consider, yknow? hang on to the second degree thought until you’re close to doing your first degree. then, if you still want to do a second degree, talk to the academic advisers at your registrar and get a lil guidance on it. that would be my take.

    as for the submatriculation thing… i was unable to find any info on this via the big ol’ world wide web. so i reached out to someone who’s pretty well connected in the chem department, and they told me that they’re not aware of any submatriculation options within chemistry. even if you’ve been working underneath the same supervisor for a long time and hope to do a phd with them, you’ll still need to actually apply to admissions to do so. i’m not sure if it’s different in biochem, but like i said, there doesn’t seem to be any readily-available internet info on this, which suggests that the answer is no submatriculation. once again, i would reach out to the department if you want a super solid answer, though. chem contact info linked here, biochem info linked here.

    in terms of skipping required introductory courses without transfer credit… i would say the answer is also probably no, otherwise a ton of people would be doing it. i’m assuming you’d be wanting to do this in order to take a wider breadth of courses, or something? introductory courses tend to have some pretty important information, and even if you could skip out on them i wouldn’t recommend it– the foundation you get in those huge first year courses tends to be quite important for the academic work you’ll be doing later on in your degree.

    but once again, you could contact the department running the course and ask, if you have a super duper legitimate reason to be skipping an intro course.

    this whole post has been an enormous “pls ask someone else” but i hope my insights have at least been… insightful! keep that excited, i-love-everything energy. it’s refreshing, and makes my brain feel a little less melty. wishin’ you all the best as you weigh your options for next year!

    be Boundless and stay healthy,

    aska

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  • subject POST

    very cool.

    April 8, 2020

    Hello! I am hoping to double major in Classic Civilization and Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Is that a valid combination? Or do I need a minor? can i even add a minor? (Degree Explorer keeps telling me it’s an invalid POSt combination!)

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    hey there,

    sorry for the long wait with this answer! it’s taken me a while to look into this, because i’m stupid about degree explorer sometimes, but as far as i can tell it… should be a valid combination? i managed to add all the NMC majors to that combination on my degree explorer, anyway, once i confirmed that it wouldn’t mess with my current degree explorer plans.

    so i don’t know what’s up with your error message. you can contact your registrar if you’re still having trouble, i guess. but the good news is that your combination should be valid! i’ve never encountered a combination that wasn’t valid, unless someone was trying to specialize AND major in the same thing (not ok, apparently).

    to answer your second and third questions:

    you don’t need a minor if you’re doing a double major. to graduate from u of t, you generally need a specialist OR a double major OR a major and two minors. that’s the minimum required POSt combination, and tbh it’s the way to go if you still wanna have any space for electives or breadth requirements. now, if you’re a chronic overachiever, super interested in too many things, or you just plain hate yourself, you can go aBoVE anD bEyOnD those requirements and add up to three subject POSts. that is, as long as the third one is a minor.

    tl:dr u doin good buddy, have fun studying your ancient civilizations! very cool.

    be Boundless,

    aska

     

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  • academic offense,  covid-19

    “waiting for academic rep to contac–” *static*

    April 8, 2020

    I’m a first year eng student shifting online. 2 labs I did not know how to submit and sent it to my professors & second time I tried to submit remotely and searched how to do it and submitted the wrong one. I got an email about an academic offense and realized my friends codes were sent and submitted and not mine they r completely different & work there is no incentive and I have my search history on how I was trying to figure out how submit. What will happen. Waiting for academic rep to contac

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    hey there,

    you ok, bud? never finished your sentence there.

    i know it’s been a rough transition to online school for many people, and it must be even tougher to navigate that as a first year– in my first year, i had no clue what was what. so take a sec, breathe, it’s okay, you’re doing great.

    typically, the procedure for academic offenses begins with a meeting with your instructor. i’m guessing that under the current circumstances, that’ll be conducted on zoom or something. anyway, this meeting is where you’ll explain to your instructor what happened– how the mistake was made, how confused you were, etc etc. at this point, it would be useful for you to have proof that what happened was an honest mistake. so have your search history ready to go, and any other evidence you think will work in your favor, like the file that you meant to submit and proof that it was completed on time. if, after this meeting, your instructor believes you to be innocent of an academic offence, you’re off the hook.

    if not, the case goes up the ladder. in other words, it’ll go to the department chair or dean, and you’ll probably have another zoom meeting. more on the rest of the procedure here, should you choose to torture yourself with information that may not even apply to you.

    that’s basically what i can tell you about what will happen to you. obviously the specifics of it will depend on how your meetings go, and how far up the chain your case gets moved. i hope for your sake that things get resolved early on so you don’t have to gou through the whole ordeal. maybe they’ll be a little more forgiving given that we’re all in a weird transition-to-online-school phase that’s thrown everyone off a little bit, instructors included.

    unrelated, but i’ve referenced the code of behaviour on academic matters way, way more often than is healthy and this is the first time i noticed how melodramatic it is. truly. “this mandate is more than a mere pious hope. it represents a condition necessary for free enquiry, which is the university’s life blood.” um… ok. it’s just a set of rules, but ok.

    sending you good vibes from quarantine! hope your mistake gets resolved okay.

    be Boundless,

    aska

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