:lol: You expect these guys to remember that sort of shit?

That's like asking a Civil engineer how to design concrete reinforcement 10 years after uni :lol:

Edited by bethfc: 28/1/2016 12:25:26 PM

Good way of looking at it cheers!

Degree is coding and programming is the way to go :)

-PB

Open uni, psychology at Swinburne. Year round study so yeah, Summer. And doing uni in prague same time at the moment, but meh it's snowing here.

Yo JP. If you don't mind my asking, what kind of WAM do you need to transfer from into arts/law?

I'm assuming this is at Sydney Uni? I read on from what you've written.

On the subject of law, as long as you have some kind of interest in it (or you like the logic of legal reasoning or whatever), it might be a go for you.

Don't be one of those people who thinks that doing law requires you to become a lawyer. Many investment bankers, other types of businessmen, journalists, historians and probably members of various other professions have law degrees.

The degree, I'm given to understand, gives you critical and analytical skills which are highly desired in other professions. It doesn't pigeon-hole you into becoming a solicitor/barrister.

The other thing, if you haven't chosen to transfer, is that you can always do your arts degree, graduate and then apply to do the JD (postgrad law degree).

That's what I'm considering doing.

I'm not sure I've got the grades to get into Melbourne JD. Maybe if I ace the LSAT. But I'm giving it serious thought. In any event, I daresay I'd get in somewhere or other.

My main problem, however, is that I'm fairly certain I don't want to live in Australia, the UK or the USA.

Not such a fan of living in these places. I've always found the prospect of law appealing for the sake of being a lawyer; providing counsel and advocacy. That was the main thing compelling me to become a lawyer. The trouble is that it'll probably be a fat lot of good for me in the place(s) that I want to go. Unless I were to become an investment banker or something overseas, then it might work. But that's not what appeals to me about studying law.

Where do you want to go and what type of legal work do you want to do quick?

I want to move to Sweden. For a couple of years now, I've worked mostly with Swedes (some Norwegians, some Brits, too). Hands down get on far better with them than any other nationality. Aside from a handful of high school friends, basically all my closest friends are Swedes.

I much prefer their way of life and general attitude to the vast majority of Australians and British people. Don't get me wrong, I've known some absolutely shocking Swedes. But the vast majority that I've known have been great.

As for the type of legal work that I want to become involved with?

I'm not absolutely sure. I was going to wait until I start studying the law before I have a real idea. I've done a human rights subject through the law faculty of my university and I was a HUGE fan. I could see myself practising criminal law. Constitutional law also interests me.

So we're talking about the more, shall we say, glamorous parts of law.

I'm less keen on corporate law. I reckon I could work in law involving, for instance, M&A. But I doubt I'd find it to be inspiring work.

Either way, if I'm to get a job in these more technical legal fields, I'm not sure how helpful (if at all) it would be for me to study in Aus, given I wish to live in Sweden. Law is so technical and language-based that I'd need to study it in Sweden which (apart from presumably being a difficult course to get into in the first place) would require a most fluent level of Swedish. That is attainable one day, but not right now when I'm working on grammar and conversational aspects of the language.

Hi quick. I agree with your assessment in the last paragraph. If you want to be in Sweden long term then studying in Australia may not be as worthwhile.

There are also a lot of post graduate requirements in legal practice so I would figure the best way to meet those conditions for practicing law in Sweden.

One possibility you can explore is maybe EU law. I did that as a unit while on exchange in the UK and it is essentially constitutional law. You may be able to have more options with Universities on the continent as well since some of them teach in English. That said, I'm not sure how prevalent EU law would be in Sweden. I think you would hate M&A. Most people do. It's essentially Due Dilgence.

Good luck with it all.

anyone here studying at Southern Cross University ? Looking at one of their post grad certs via SCU online...
( have to study online/part time as I work full time )
Other option is Torrens University... although they are different as in they are a full fee paying university and relatively new

Yeah I'm at Sydney. You need a WAM around 80 to transfer, although it varies a bit each year obviously.

JP

Ta. I noticed on the US election thread that somebody had interrogated you to ask what you do and ultimately you wrote that one of the grounds upon which you'd consider transferring to Arts/Law is concern that Arts degree will be worth fuck all in the future. I haven't read the whole thread. But that did grab my attention.

I just thought I'd take the opportunity to give my thoughts on this (as I can relate to this dilemma) on this thread.

Certainly, having a law degree will enhance your career prospects. Also, law is interesting to study for lots of people. And I'll concede that if I were to stay in Australia, I would strongly consider some kind of postgraduate degree in addition to my Arts degree.

But I think it's a bit misguided to think an Arts degree is worth fuck all down the track. My father did an arts degree (and no postgrad) and he wound up up in a senior position at a big mining firm.

I went for an interview for a part-time job with a finance consultancy firm (I can't remember which type of finance). I spelled out to the gent interviewing me that, beyond an economics unit, I didn't have a background in that area. He told me not to worry and that it can all be learnt. Now I didn't get the job but the important thing is he explained his background. He'd been a big investment banker in London. His studies? BA and then MA in philosophy.

Plenty of people in journalism and publishing have just an arts degree.

I'm not sure if this is so possible in Australia (where people are incredibly thick and lack flexibility of thought as well as ingenuity), but overseas it's DEFINITELY possible to get somewhere with just an arts degrees.

One of my uncle's friends did fine art (or art history, it's called these days) at for his major. With just that he went to Hong Kong and joined one of the big auction houses. Apparently, he's an expert there and has a brilliant job. According to my uncle, this bloke earns more than any of them (which takes quite some doing, if that's true).

My aunt used to work at one of the big accountancy firms, in Aus and in London. She said it was considerably better in London. In Aus, everyone had done much the same thing at uni. Whereas in London, they didn't give a crap what kind of degree you had done. It could be an arts degree, science, law, accounting, finance, whatever. People just had whatever degree and then trained as accountants. In those circumstances, it certainly wouldn't matter if you had an arts degree. And she said the office was far better for it. Everybody was competent but unlike here, there was a lot more ingenuity. A lot of people could think outside the box, owing to the fact that people came from varied backgrounds.

So maybe if you're wanting to live in Australia your whole life then yes, it's an idea to do something in addition to an arts degree. Although even here, it's not a worthless degree. But in other parts of the world, you can build a career out of it.

It's certainly a question worth asking.

JP is all about a veneer of prestige. No grounding in reality.

I study at USQ online. Very good & easy.

Fair enough, I appreciate the advice. Obviously an Arts degree isn't totally worthless - my thinking isn't that I'd getting nowhere with an Arts degree, but more that Law would further broaden my options. I'll be in Australia for at least a significant portion of my life and even simply for the signaling value to prospective employers I would think a law degree would be more useful. The way I see it is: I can either coast through uni doing Arts and have decent career options once I leave, or I can combine it with Law, which would be more challenging but potentially has bigger rewards once I leave uni. I might as well have a crack at the latter right?

I think that's sensible. As long as you can find some kind of interest in what you're studying, it's sensible if you're going to live in Aus. As I say, you can get a perfect career (interesting, challenging and financially rewarding) with just an arts degree based on the examples I provided as well as countless others. In Australia, potentially, but especially overseas.

But, while possible, it is more difficult to do that in Australia. If only because of current prevailing attitudes.

What a law degree will do is it will give you a far greater margin for error. It will give you more options (in Australia, at least).

So I think you've played it smart. If I end up wanting to stay in Australia (in fact potentially even with a view to moving overseas), I will likely undertake postgraduate study. Quite possibly law.

Anybody doing anything interesting at uni this semester?

Taking an interesting French subject.

Anybody read Tintin in French? By God, it's racist and politically incorrect.

No, unless you find Quantitative Methods interesting.

A degree of any sort opens up one door in Europe - teaching English. You can get a teaching certificate but it doesn't open all the doors up unless you also have a degree. It's one door I'm keeping ajar for myself because I'm uncertain how long I will stay here in CR.

Btw it's the opposite in the USA. It's getting to the point that you need post grad as a minimum to get ahead there.

Edited by bohemia: 29/2/2016 04:05:22 AM

It depends how young you are. If you're still early 20's you can afford to take risks on very large time commitments like Law, Medicine, Psychology etc. If you're 30's and need something that can deliver benefits earlier then a stepping stone degree can be quite attractive. I'm in the latter camp.

What's the go for you with HECS being overseas? Paying up front?

I'm doing the American Civil War and a history of American Presidencies post-Vietnam as my electives. Looking forward to the latter in particular.

I was considering doing the Arab-Israeli conflict but decided it'd just be full of zealots from both sides.

Should both be pretty interesting, would have loved to do some history at uni. Looking forward to the boy wonder trying to use this against you :lol:

Edited by mcjules: 29/2/2016 11:02:56 PM

:lol: No doubt he'll find a way.

The thing with history at uni, where I am at least, is that the scope of subjects tends to be very broad - there's a course on the full five thousand years of Chinese history for example, or a course for all of Europe in the twentieth century. It'll be great to be able to study some more specific topics.

They usually do a few key events in those sorts of subjects but yeah "chinese history" is ridiculously generic.

To be fair, you can get a lot out of reading some classic history books, even if you didn't get the chance to study it formally.

The only difference is you miss out on the tute discussion (which I'm sure can be mimicked by way of the internet) and the essay writing. Essay writing in history does help you get a grip of the topic you're writing on. Just taking in all the information, then formulating a clear, usually nuance and cogent line of argument then backing it up accordingly with primary and secondary sources really does help. But you can still get a lot out of merely reading various things.

There are a handful of historical books on any given topic (the Reformation, the French Revolution, World War II, etc.) which are just absolute classics and will give a similar look into it that a history student gets.

I've enjoyed most of my history units, but I remember finishing my essays on the Russian Revolution and the Northern Ireland Peace Process (obviously different subjects) and walking away thinking that I've got such a good grasp of the why and how of it all. It's nice to have the occasional lightbulb moment.

When you get to that point, you're in the best possible position to interpret related current events. The beauty of history.

We're in a remarkably similar position as regards our arts subjects.

I'm doing one history unit this semester. I was tempted to do a subject called the Modern Middle-East. Really tempted. I want to have a clearer understanding of what is such a significant topic today. It occurred to me that the class would have many zealots from both sides but this didn't deter me. In the end I didn't do it because the assessments are very unusual. Potentially I could go well in them (maybe really well), but they're not essay based. More case report.

I've ended up enrolling in a subject that looks at the USA's relationship with the rest of the world in the 20th Century. Very broad and it seems to jump through quite dense topics (like the Cold War). But it does look interesting.

Not utterly dissimilar to what you're doing.

Sounds interesting. The USA certainly had a prominent 20th Century.

However, hopefully its not one of those classes where the lecturer sits there and rips on them constantly. I did a similar class as a free choice elective as part of my degree and dropped it for English Literature (1st year class on medieval English writing) because the lecturer was very much only interested in criticising the USA.

The only week I skip my lectures, the lecture capture system fucks up. Great start to the semester. :lol:

Do I do an MPA or do a Bachelor of something awesome that isn't Accounting? Something like Music or Languages

Do accounting.