Unnecessary Units: second sem BMS unit just a BS unit

By Gabby Fallon

When you start at university, you place a lot of trust into the university and faculty to help you come out with a degree. After nearly completing my first year (only just!), I have a few questions about the necessity of some of the units my degree entails.

I’m a student in Biomedicine, Genetics and Molecular Biology, a degree that’s heavy in knowledge of the human body and requires a lot of memorisation to pass units. In first semester, I completed a unit called BMS101, Introduction to the Human Body. Continuing along the path of my degree to my second semester, I am now required to take a unit called BMS107, Vertebrae Form and Function, which is extremely similar in content, almost identical.

Now I want to question the requirement that students take both these units when they are uncannily similar in content. I will give credit to BMS107 in that it covers more content across a variety of species, unlike BMS101 which is strictly human biology content. For someone studying my degree, I find this second semester unit to be completely unnecessary and a waste of my time. I could spend this time studying units that will deepen my knowledge rather than repeating introductory units that are the same.

The actual BMS107 unit isn’t bad – it covers a lot of useful information. It’s useful for many degrees such as chiropractic, animal science and many more in the vet and life science areas, but I question its relevance for my personal degree. My only criticisms are that there are largely overfilled laboratory classes, the labs themselves to become mandatory (which would be easier on students and demonstrators if classes where smaller) and the fact that there are more enrolled students than the lecture hall can fit.

Unfortunately, though, just like any university student, I’ll continue just doing what the university tells me I need to do to complete my degree. Reducing class sizes and making the labs mandatory, so it doesn’t feel like I’m wasting my time with this unit would be a vast improvement. I’m mad about it and I hope that if we, as a student body, stand up and make our voice heard some change may occur for the better of our degrees.