Current Sussex Student doing Economics - AMA and FAQ answered!

I've had a couple of people private message me about the uni and course, and thought it would be great to share in case people are having the same questions. If anyone also has any other questions to ask me (going into third year, experience of staying on campus and at home, studying economics) then feel free to do so!

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What was your average weekly workload in hours for each year?
Workload varies depending on how serious you take seminar work, constant revision and etc. The bare minimum for work outside of the contact hours could be just a couple of hours first year, and slightly more second year. Of course if there's an essay due, this number could rise. And then a bit more for if you want to write up lecture notes, read seminar material and that. I haven't started third year yet but I can imagine my workload will be quite a bit higher, but there's plenty of free time available over the years still

...and contact hours?
As for hours, it is generally less then 10 hours a week so it's not a lot. In the first year most modules consist of a 1 hour lecture and a 1 hour seminar - however depending on your optional module choices you may have have slightly more or less than this. This is roughly constant for all 3 years.

Is the maths easy to follow? (Doing BSc)
The first term has an intro to maths course that is basically just a quick course on A-level maths, along with partial differentiation which is fundamental maths to know for economics. If you get the same lecturer as I did (Michael Barrow) you'll be fine as he is brilliant at teaching how to do maths, you should find that you'll know most of it already if you've done AS so you should be revising more than learning!

You may have a bit of trouble further on, and the BSc is a more maths-heavy course, but there's a lot of help available to get you up to speed so you should be fine such as office hours, extra seminars and online resources! What's worse is my situation where I'm doing the BA and we are expected to know maths for macro that was only taught to BSc students, so take that as a blessing for the second year! (I failed that module unfortunately!)

If you really aren't getting on with the maths first term I believe you can switch to the BA before christmas as the BSc-specific courses only start after christmas I believe (you'll need to check this out though).

Is econometrics as bad as everyone says it is?
They don't teach this until third year so I'll be starting this in only a few weeks, I dipped my toe into the subject for one of my presentations last term and I'm not particularly excited about doing econometrics (it looked as hard as!) - that said it does look like something I can get my head around once that maths 'clicks', so basically you shouldn't worry about it for now!

What are seminars like at sussex?
The seminars for Economics vary, but generally they are quite laid back. They ideally want people to get involved but like school there are usually a few who love to hear their own voice and opinions - so they will do most of the talking. Some seminars do like to do a thing where the worksheet is split between groups of 2/3/4 and then each group works together to present their answer to the question back to the class.

I'm quite nervous about the seminars... :/
They might sound nerve-racking (I'm not a huge fan of public speaking too!) but most weeks you can get away with either a) Being the quiet one or b) Your question not needing a response. Most seminars though usually involve the teacher talking for an hour and will rarely ask specific people for stuff - so don't worry!

I'd just like to mention though how I have always struggled with public debate and speaking, and once I got to uni I got so much more confidence by being plunged into the social deep end. If you're looking to move into halls, go to some freshers events, get to know your housemates, and if possible keep contact with family and friends, especially if any are nearby for actually meet-ups, to help you settle in.