Making The Grade

It’s uni results time again! I’m going to give you a Kit-esque breakdown, because I know you need it so.

SCMP322 - 88 (High Distinction)
Consisted of mostly the planning and execution of our final grad concert. However, that only accounted for 20% of the mark (which was assessed through a journal). The other 80% came through 20% for reflective reports, one a week, on guest speaker presentations, and 60% for a research essay, abstract and literature review. I must have done fairly well in the essay because my marks were sitting around the late 80s mark before the essay. I’d actually like to get it back at some point and see the comments and mark.

SCMP312 - 87 (High Distinction)
Having only 12 (or so) weeks to come to terms with writing music in cSound (click for description), with a class of a huge range of computer literacy levels, there was certainly a serious challenge to overcome. My experience with basic code languages like HTML and CSS was a big help, but it was still a bit of a weekly struggle to get the thing to do what you want. Not entirely a bad struggle though, as it appeased my love of puzzles and problem-solving, and I’m certainly happy with my mark.

SCMP302 - 77 (Plain ‘Ol Distinction)
The first half was a free-for-all, the second half we created Audio/Visual works. My first composition was a seriously rushed job, something I would have liked to have spent weeks on but didn’t have the time, and my mark suffered a little from it. Due to the assessment criteria, I only really had one chance to redeem myself. I got 80% for the second composition, even though the entire comment from the lecturer was “Excellent. This is a very tight piece on a conceptual and technical level.” I enjoyed this class the most, but got my lowest grade for it. Oh well…

BUSS110 - 88(High Distinction)
This was my commerce subject, Introduction to Business Information Systems (or some variance on those words). The assessment criteria was extremely forgiving. If you turned up to the tute every week, listened to the notes, and did the simple exercises, you were score 5 whole marks per week. They were very cheap marks and I squeezed out every mark I could. I ended up doing a major load of the group work. For three of my group members, english was their second language, including one who never once contributed. In the end it was worth it as I went into the exam sitting on 94.5%. Even if I scored the lowest pass mark in the exam (40% in this case), I would have walked away with a credit. Doing the maths now, as long as they didn’t do any scaling, I got just over 78% in the exam. Pretty nice considering I didn’t turn up to a single lecture!

Like Kit, I calculated my Music average for the three years. Unweighted, it sits at 84.72%, which is shamefully close to a HD. Now using Kit’s patented Hundred-Level Weighting system (in which 300 level, third year subjects are worth 3 times first years, second years 2 times), it works out to be 84.69%, which basically means I’ve been pretty consistent grade-wise over all the years. Finally, adding in my commerce electives, my average drops to 83.95%.

It’s a nice feeling to know that I don’t have any more classes of music to take. I think it’s also safe to say they got their moneys-worth out of me scholarship wise (and they can’t take that money away from me now!). Now for another six months (at least) of commerce! I’m going to take just three subjects to lighten my load next semester. It’s all I need to graduate from music, and I’ll be really busy with theatre stuff.