Report: Marissa Cappellano
On Monday 16 September, the Year 7 seven cohorts went to La Trobe for a discovery day. This trip was to introduce us to the life of a university student and to inspire us to start thinking about what we need to do to get a university place in the future.
At the start of the day we were escorted to a lecture hall to be introduced to the students who were guiding us. We were told that there were three activities throughout the day. For these activities we were in our homeroom classes. First, 7A went to a classroom to do an activity on different universities in Australia. Next was morning break when all three classes met in the centre of the Bundoora campus. We were able to go to one of the food courts to have a look around, buy food and meet back at 11.05am.
Then 7A went on to go play a game called ‘Graduate’. The game started with four teams and one person from each team was elected to be human pieces. They had to roll the dice and move that many spaces. If you landed on yellow, you had to complete sentences with a uni related word starting with that specific letter. If you landed on green you had to play charades. If you landed on red you and your team had one minute to play Pictionary. Finally, if you landed on blue you could choose which one you wanted to play. You got points for everything you got right and when you rolled a six. At the end the team with the most points won. Then, the person elected to be the playing piece could graduate.
After that we had a scavenger hunt all around the campus. We were in teams and each had an iPad. We set off with a 30-minute time limit. When we found one of the papers, we had to scan the QR code then answer a question. After that it was lunch. Back we went to the food courts to buy lunch and had a nice, long break at the Agora..
Finally, the uni students took us to another lecture hall to have a question and answer session. We could ask any questions about uni. Then if we could answer questions asked by the uni students, we got a prize.
I learnt that you can change your studies throughout your time at uni. The subjects you study result in different degrees. It’s very independent at uni. This means that you do the work with little to no close supervision by your teachers. I found it interesting that your timetable could be so flexible and that you can pay off your student loans within a few years. I also learnt that you can watch some of your lectures online if you miss them or need to rewatch them.
It was exciting being at La Trobe and it gave us a lot to think about.
