Academic Disciplines As Sub-Cultures:The Need To Adapt

What Academics Expect of Undergraduates 41

The library. You may be expected to develop your own research topics or design your own experiments. Assignments will be longer – 3000- or 5000-word essays instead of the first-year 1500-word length – and will deal more specifically with theories and concepts. In Science courses written assignments will no longer consist of lab reports and occasional short descriptive or summarizing essays; now you must apply theories, analyse, and evaluate.

If you take Humanities courses, much of your time continues to be spent in reading, in writing essays and in presenting tutorial papers. Both the quantity and quality of your work, however, is expected to increase. And much of the increased load comes in the area of independent study. The number of hours you spend in formal lectures, labs and tutorials is usually fewer than in first-year.

If you gain a good final grade in a first-year course – usually at least a Credit – you may then be eligible to work for an honours degree rather than a Pass degree. This normally means that you work at Honours level in one of your major subjects. The procedure for working towards an Honours degree varies greatly among universities and between departments.

In some cases an Honours students must take particular courses within the Department, usually courses requiring theoretical studies, and must pass them at a high level. In some cases Honours students are grouped in separate tutorials and must complete extra assignments. In most cases Honours students take an additional year, they must write a sub-thesis which requires some ind ependent research.